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PROPHECIES OF REVELATION AND DANIEL 

DEVELOPED IN THE 

HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM. 

A TREATISE WHICH SEEMS TO INDICATE A LAW UNDERLYING THE 

LLFE OF MAN BY WHICH THE EVENTS OF HIS HISTORY COME 

ABOUT; OR, IN THE WORDS OF THE POET, THAT 

"THERE IS A DIVINITY THAT SHAPES OUR 

ENDS ROUGH HEW THEM AS WE WILL:" 

AND BEING 

C0SM0THE0L0GIES AND INDICATIONS OF JUDGMENT 

COMPLETED. 



J BY 

ROBERT SHAW, M. A., 

author of 

" Creator and Cosmos;" op the "Hebrew Cosmogony;" op the "Origin op the 
Mosaic Dispensation with reflections upon the Miracles and Heroes of the 
Old Testament;" of an "Inquiry into the Origin of Christianity;" of the 
"Origin of the Ancient Civilization of the Nile's Valley;" of a 
"Critique of the History of Ancient Egypt;" of a " Critique of 
the History of the Scots or Gaels," with a general disquisition 
into the Origin of the Scythic Races ; ofa" Sketch of the 
Ancient Cosmotheologies of the World;" of the "Phoen- 
ician Cosmogonies ; " of the " Chaldean and Hebrew 
and the Chinese and Hindoo Origines," etc., etc. 



BE VISED. 




ST. LOUIS: 
BECKTOLD & COMPANY. 

1889. 






Entered according to Act ot Congress, In the year 1889, by 

ROBERT SHAW, 
III the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. 0. 



INTRODUCTION. 



(Prophecies of Revelation.) 



There are periods in human history, corresponding, in some 
gense, to the cycles of the physical cosmos. In the natural world 
we have in the species the rotation of seed, plant and seed again. 
Experience teaches there has to be the seed in order to the existence 
of the plant from which the seed. And so it is said, whether or 
not strictly with truth, speaking analogously, that " history repeats 
itself." In regard to the subject of this treatise, therefore, 
prophecy may be thought of as the seed or germ of which history 
is the full developed tree in all its ramifications and foliage. From 
the prophetic word, symbol or expression spring the volumes of 
human history. It is the same power that is the author of the 
objects of nature, which foretells and develops human history in 
its seemingly cyclical manifestations, which, indeed, knows the 
beginning, the progress and the issue of all things. 

This treatise demonstrates the principal prophecies of the book 
of Revelation, in their connection with those of the prophet 
Daniel, to have been fulfilled in the history of Christendom. The 
five divisions under which the subject is arranged correspond, in 
their order, to the order of the prophecies and of their develop- 
ment: — 

1. The Primitive Christian Church covers the first three cen- 
turies, and shows the gradual growth of Christianity in the world 
during this time. It may be said to cover the period from the 
death of Christ to the conversion of Constantine I, to the Christian 
faith. 

2. The Christian Roman Empire System covers nearly twelve 

centuries, beginning with Constantine I, who is reckoned the first 

Christian Roman emperor, and he who first established Christianity 

as the religion of the empire, — and ending with Constantine XII, 

who fell fighting against the Turks in 1453, when they captured 

Constantinople. This division embraces the history of Rome and 

Italy (400-554), during which it was devastated by or in subjection 

to Goths, Huns, Vandals, etc. 

(Hi) 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

3. This division, which deals with the Papacy and its origin, and 
then its connection, under the idea of its supremacy, with the 
Franco-German and the AnHo-Saxon-Norman monarchies, is gen- 
erally included in the prophecy itself under our second head, and 
covers between six and seven centuries, or from the neighborhood 
of the year 800 to the opening of the Protestant Reformation. It 
is, however, so systematically distinct from the (Grsecoj-Roman 
Empire system proper, as that the prophecy in relation to the latter 
sufficiently indicates it in its progress; and, therefore, its historical 
development must needs come under a different head from that of 
the latter. Under this division is given not only the direct origin 
of the papal sovereignt}^, but also the origin and progress of the 
French, the German and the Anglo-Saxon-Norman monarchies, 
down to the " Protestant Reformation." The origin and steps in 
the descent of these monarchical lines will be found much simpli- 
fied, as compared with how these appear in the histories, written 
by the monks, which have come down to us from the Middle Ages, 
histories which in parts are indeed replete with the " Historical 
Romance." 

4. In this division is developed, in connection with the prophecy 
in Revelation XVIIth, the Papal supremacy, energised, over all the 
potentates and nations of Christendom ; and under this head come, 
First, the Crusades; Second, the Explanation, in the light of his- 
tory, of said chapter XVII of the Revelation; Third, the doings 
of the Inquisition; and. Fourth, the rise of the system traced his- 
torically. I have treated the subject in all its connections without 
prejudice, but, judging from the facts as they presented themselves 
to me in the histories, I have so deduced my conclusions. 

5. In this division is discussed the Protestant Reformation; the 
principal Reformers and their movements and doctrines ; the rise 
of the Gothic and Anglic nations, which, mainly, were concerned 
in that change ; the new polities resulting to those nations there- 
from; and a brief representation of the interrelations, especially 
by way of war, of the principal European nations with each other, 
independently of their respective religions, down to the middle of 
this nineteenth century. In the church and state polities and dual 
sovereignties, arising from the Reformation, will be found reflexes 
of the preceding ones in Christendom. These polities usher in the 
Age of the Son of Man. 

St. Louis, 1889. R- S. 



CONTENTS. 




{Prophecies of Revelation and Daniel developed in the History of Christendom.) 

Pages. 

I. The Primitive Christian Church ; ( 1 ) a development of 

the prophecies relating thereto; and (2) its history 
from the death of Christ to the accession of Con- 
stantine the First 1-39 

II. The different kinds of governments of ancient Rome 

with a list of the pagan emperors beginning with 
Augustus and ending with Diocletian the next sole 
emperor preceding Constantine. An Explanation of 
Revelation XIII to verse 11th, showing its fulfilment 
in the Grseco-Roman-Christian empire, beginning 
with Constantine I in 324 and ending with Constan- 
tine XII in 1453 A. D. ; with references to parallel 
prophecies of the book of Daniel 40—127 

III. An explanation of Rev. XIII from verse 11th to the 
end of the chapter, showing its fulfilment in the 
Papacy, in connection, first, with the Roman Empire, 
as established at Constantinople; and secondly, as a 
monarchy in itself over the Exarchate, especially in 
connection with the idea of its supremacy over the 
Franco-German and the Anglo-Saxon-Norman monar- 
chies 128-1D" 

IV. An Explanation of Chapter XVIIth of Revelation, 
showing its fulfilment in the Papacy, considered in 
the idea of its energized supremacy over all kingdoms 
and potentates of the earth; under which head are 
reviewed the Crusades; the Inquisition, as estab- 
lished and operated especially in the old world; and 
as to the rise and dominion of the Papacy, with final 
reference to France, its supporter 194-2r>L ) 

(v) 



VI CONTENTS. 

Pages. 

V. The reformed governmental systems of Church and 

State. The nations of the reformation are Gothic; 
namely, (1) German and (2) Anglo-Saxon-Norman; 
they being represented in the prophecy, in their 
previous connection with the Papacy, by the two 
horns of the symbolic pretiguration of Rev., chapter 
XIII, 11-18 ; and their systems of government, com- 
bining the church with the state, being images of the 
western Roman Empire system, established by 
Charlemagne and Otho ; or images of images of the 
Roman empire system established at Constantinople. 
They are also images of the Papal dual monarchy 
as this is prefigured in Rev. XYII 253-360 

VI. Appendix, complete in proof ; 7v r ith a " Chapter upon 

the Cycles of the Ancients." 363-433 

VII. Discourses supplementary: 

1. Study of History in its connection with Prophecy 437-464 

2. On Providence and Predestination 465-472 

3. " Heaven, Hell and the Judgment 473-481 

4. " The Cross of Christ , 481-489 

5. " The Future Life 489-499 



A Review of the History of the Christian Church, 
especially with reference to the prophecies of the 
Book of Revelation. 

First an Explanation of Chapters IV. and V. of Revelation, in con- 
nection with the History of the Primitive Church. 

In order that all may profit by the experience which history 
affords, especially as it is connected with the Christian religion, we 
now propose to give a sketch of the history of the Christian Church, 
in its relation to the prophecies of the book of the Revelation, which 
book is a prophetic allegory designed to foreshow the state of the 
Christian Church in future ages in its relation to the world, especial- 
ly to the Roman Empire. The first three chapters of this book are 
taken up with the messages to the seven churches of Asia. Chapters 
IV. and V. contain another representation which we shall glance at 
as relating to the state of the Christian Church, especially during 
the first three centuries. Ch IV., v. 1 : " After this I looked, and, be 
hold, a door was opened in heaven : and the first voice which I heard 
was as it were a trumpet talking with me ; which said, Come up hith- 
er, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter." 

By heaven here, is meant the church of God, and the door being 
opened in it signifies, first, that the prophet might be enabled to 
take a view of its internal arrangements, and to form a judgment 
of its character; second, that all who would, might enter through 
the door ; and, thirdly, it is represented as now established among 
men, not at the time the prophecy was delivered, but some time after ; 
for the angel says to the prophet : " Come up hither, and I will shew 
thee things which must be hereafter." This hereafter, as we have 
remarked, refers especially to the period which intervened between 
the delivering of the prophecy and the establishment of the Catholic 
Christian religion in the Roman Empire, or say the second and third 
centuries of the Christian era. Verse 2 : " And immediately I was 
in the spirit : and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on 
the throne." The principal idea conveyed in this verse is a com- 
pound one, that of a throne set up in heaven, and one sitting there- 
on. Verse 3 : " And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and 
a sardine stone : and there was a rainbow round about the throne, 
in sight like unto an emerald." Here there is no attempt made to de- 
scribe the one that sat upon the throne, only that he was to look 
upon like a jasper and a sardine stone, which stones are of various 
colors. This one is meant to symbolize the Deity, doubtless in ac- 
cordance with the primitive Church idea ; and the rainbow round 
about the throne, in appearance like to an emerald, would signify not 

(5)" 



6 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

only his holiness and perfection, but also his propitious character. 
Verse 4 : " And round about the throne were four and twenty 
seats (lit. thrones), and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders 
sitting, clothed in white raiment ; and they had on their heads 
crowns of gold." The four and twenty elders clothed in white 
robes and having on their heads crowns of gold, and sitting upon 
seats or thrones round the throne of Deity, represent the Christian 
Church as made up of Jews and Gentiles. The white robes are em- 
blematic of truth and purity, and the crowns of gold of the wealth and 
dignity of the Christian Church on earth ; for although this prophecy, 
we are now considering, we apply especially to the primitive Church, 
yet it may refer to the truer part of the Christian Church in all ages. 
Verse 5 : " And out of the throne proceeded lighnings and thunder- 
ings and voices ; and there were seven lamps of fire burning before 
the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God." The lightnings and 
thunderings, and voices proceeding out of the throne indicate that 
a change was being brought about in the old established state of 
things by the direct will and power of Deity ; in this case that a rev- 
olution in religion was taking place in the world, which was so in 
the times of the primitive Church. The seven lamps of fire burning 
before the throne representing the seven Spirits of God (seven being 
prophetically a perfect number), indicate the perfection of the effect- 
ive power of Deity, the perfection of his wisdom and knowledge, as 
well as the perfection of the light which the true Christian religion 
doth infuse. The true Christian religion, that is, the Christian reli- 
gion rightly understood and unmixed with error, is superior to all 
other religions which we know to have existed. Verse 6 : " And 
before the throne there was a sea of glass, like unto crystal ; and 
in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four 
beasts (lit. living creatures, Greek, Cwa) full of eyes before and be- 
hind." The sea of glass, like unto crystal before the throne, in- 
dicated the purity of faith of the true Christian Church, espe- 
cially as set forth in primitive times, in the ages of its persecution. 
Where we meet with any passage in this book which sets forth 
a sea of glass mingled with fire, as ch. XV. v. 2, it symbolizes a 
state of the faith more or less corrupt. The four living creatures 
being in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, 
means that they appear under, and supporting the throne, having 
their faces outwards, and their hind parts inwards. And their being 
full of eyes, before and behind, would signify the omniscience of 
Deity, as represented in them, his agencies. The idea of Deity rep- 
resented here, is in accordance with the idea of Deity which would 
prevail among mankind in the ages which the vision especially rep- 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. % 7 

resents. Mankind, according to this, hardly conceives of Deity as 
omnipresent, but a good deal in accordance with the old Jewish idea 
of Jehovah, a personal Deity, still not conceived of as having parts or 
passions, as eminently set forth here in him that sits upon the throne. 
Still, although perhaps not conceived then in that way, the omni- 
presence of Deity appears in his omniscience as symbolized by the 
eyes in the living creatures. This vision eminently symbolizes the 
idea of Deity, entertained in the primitive Church before the subject 
of the Trinity began to occupy much of men's attention, or to be agi- 
tated. Verse 7 : " And the first living creature was like a lion, and 
the second living creature like a calf, and the third living creature 
had a face as a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying 
eagle." These four living creatures might symbolize the whole of 
animate creation, so far as it pertains to the earth and the air ; or 
they might rather symbolize mankind world-wide (as indicated by 
the number four), in all the phases of his character. Thus, the lion- 
like face symbolizes steady courage and boldness, as represented in 
the warrior class ; the calf-like appearance, the ignorant, uneducated 
classes, the man-like appearance, the intelligent classes ; and the 
eagle-like appearance, the intrepid, the fearless, and, shall we say, 
chivalrous of mankind. Besides, and in connection with the last ex- 
planation, the four symbolic living creatures might have had a refer- 
ence to the four prophetic Empires, the first of which, the Babylonian, 
was symbolized by the lion, and the last, the Roman, was always 
represented by the eagle ; the calf might properly symbolize the Me- 
do-Persian,and the man the Grecian Empire. These four Empires were 
in the main united in one, the Roman Empire, at the time this 
prophecy was delivered. Either of these explanations, that is, of 
the four living creatures, symbolizing the animate creation pertain- 
ing to the earth and air, or mankind world-wide, as described above, 
is admissible. Thus, God was conceived as a Being above, and gov- 
erning all these. 

Verse 8 : " And the living creatures had each of them six wings 
about him ; and they were full of eyes within ; and they rest not day 
and night, saying : " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which 
was, and is, and is to come." Each of the living creatures having 
six wings, six being prophetically an imperfect number, signifies 
that each of them represented only a part ; but taken all together 
they represented the whole of what they did represent ; twenty- 
four wings corresponding to the number of the heavenly elders, 
which we know symbolized the complete Christian Church, as 
made up of Jews and Gentiles. "And they were full of eyes 
within," signifying the omniscience and omnipresence of Deity 



8 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

as represented in his agencies and creatures. This word "within" 
does not mean the same with the word " behind," verse 6 ; both of 
them respectively corresponding to our words within and behind. 
And they rest not day and night, saying : Holy, holy, holy, Lord 
God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come." All animate 
creation is naturally imbued with the spirit of praise to God, who 
maketh even the wrath of man to praise him ; and this praise as- 
cends to Deity by night and by day. And not only from the 
animal, but from the vegetable, yea, from all creation, does praise 
ascend to Deity, but in different ways. The praise here, however, 
referred to has especial reference to that which ascends to God 
from mankind world-wide. The Lord God Almighty, which was, 
and is, and is to come, or the ever present Deity manifesting himself 
variously, or rather conceived of differently by mankind in different 
ages in one way, in the past, in another way in the present, and still 
in other ways to be in the future. This, too, has especial reference 
to the eternity of man, as best represented in the idea of Jesus 
Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the 
first and the last. 

Verse 9 to end of chapter : " And when those living creatures give 
glory and honor and thanks to him that sat upon the throne who 
liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before 
him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and 
ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying : Thou art 
worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor, and power; for thou 
hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were creat- 
ed." Here, the twenty-four elders are represented as praising God 
simultaneously with the four living creatures ; the elders represent- 
ing the Christian Church, now established among mankind in general, 
which are especially represented by the four living creatures prais- 
ing God, worshipping Deity variously in different localities of the 
earth. Both the Christian worship of the Deity and the worship of 
Deity by mankind variously, go on at the same time. Here, be it 
remarked, the worship is given to one God, without any idea of 
plurality of persons in the Deity being implied. The elders cast 
their crowns before the throne, signifying that the Christian Church 
would willingly surrender their wealth and honors at the shrine of 
Deity, and that though kings, they would be the servants of God, in 
all self-denial and humility. 

Ch. V., v. 1 : " And I saw in the right hand of him that sat upon 
the throne a book written within and on the back side, and sealed 
with seven seals." Here, he that sits upon the throne is represented 
as having a right hand, which is the only description as to parts that 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 9 

is given of him, and in the hand he holds a little book (fiifihov) which 
is written within and on the back side (after the manner of a roll), 
and sealed with seven seals. This little book symbolized the wisdom 
and knowledge which the Christian religion was designed to impart 
to mankind. But how was this wisdom and knowledge to be attain- 
ed ? For the little book was sealed with seven seals, completely, 
perfectly sealed ; for seven signifies completeness, perfectness. This 
we shall see by and by. 

Verses 2-6 : " And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud 
voice : Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof. 
And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth was 
able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much 
because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book. 
And one of the elders said unto me : Weep not : behold, the Lion 
of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the 
book and to loose the seals thereof." 

By the strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice is doubtless 
symbolized the efforts which humanity would make at the time of 
the introduction of Christianity to extricate itself from the bonds of 
superstition. The prophet weeps because there is found no one either 
in heaven or earth, the old Church or the world, worthy or able to 
open the book, or to loose the seals, which indicates the pitiable con- 
dition of ignorance and superstition in which humanity was. But 
one of the elders raises his courage by saying to him : " Weep not : 
Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root*of David, hath pre- 
vailed to open the book." Christianity was primarily of the Jews. 
The ideal Christ of the Gospel is represented as springing from the 
tribe of Judah, and the family of David. Here, however, Christ is 
represented as the root or ancestor of David, which shows that man- 
kind personified, especially the Jewish nation, from which the idea 
of Christianity originated, is meant. Mankind, personified under 
the idea of Christ (or in the ideal Christ), the ancestor and 
offspring of David, is meant. The Lion of the tribe of Judah will 
then signify Christianity and all its agencies. This, by teaching 
men what they were and what they ought to be and to do, imparted 
to them divine wisdom and knowledge ; revealed to them the mys- 
tery of Deity ; so that the humble Christian, if he be moderately 
intelligent, may become as conversant with the subject of Deity as 
the proud and learned worldly philosopher. 

Verses 6-8 : " And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne 
and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders stood 
a Lamb, as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, 
which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And 

Let those 'who are not Greek scholars not suspect that the word "mot" here refers to 
" Juda" immediately preceding; for the word " root " is in apposition with the word "Lion," 
and so the meaning is as we have given it; otherwise it would be different. See Bei , \ Ml. lt». 




10 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat 
upon the throne." The prophet seeing the Lamb standing in the 
midst of the throne, and of the four living creatures, and in the midst 
of the elders, means that the Lamb formed a conspicuous object of 
the group made up of the throne, with the living creatures support- 
ing it, and the elders around. The Lamb would appear thus a con- 
spicuous object somewhere near the centre (/^<ra>) of the group. 
The Lamb appearing as if he had been slain signifies the crucifixion 
or slaying of the flesh, with its affections and lusts, as symbolized by 
the representation of the crucifixion on Calvary, which each true 
Christian has to effect in himself. And this, as every good Christian 
minister knows, is a far more important crucifixion (though not a 
literal one) than any literal crucifixion of the body can be. This 
carnal crucifixion is necessary to be practised by all Christians in 
order that they may live the life of entire godliness in the spirit, and 
so attain to divine truth ; otherwise, be their faith or name what it 
may, they remain still in their sins and their ignorance. This cruci- 
fixion of the flesh with its affection and lusts, and living the life of 
patient self-denial and entire consecration to God, are the all-impor- 
tant things in Christianity, without which all other things, by what- 
ever name called, are of no avail to the attainment of perfection in 
wisdom and the knowledge of God. The age of the primitive Church 
was eminently one of self-denial and persecution for the Christians, 
during which they lived in general holier lives, and, we believe, 
maintained the faith purer than in any subsequent age. The lamb 
having seven horns and seven eyes signifies, first, the omnipotence of 
true Christianity in which men are not only made perfect, but 
conquer through intelligent and patient self-abnegation and zealous 
activity in the cause of godliness; and, second, the omniscience 
which is attained by the pursuit of the true Christian course. Each 
one has in one's self the principle of this omniscience and omnipo- 
tence, which is the real and true omniscience and omnipotence : and 
the sum of mankind have it collectively ; only requiring to be de- 
veloped in each and all. The Lamb having the seven horns and 
seven eyes (perfection of power and of wisdom) symbolized the 
certain success of the Christian movement, the final prevalence of 
true Christianity. The Lamb steps forward and takes the book out 
of the right hand of him that sits upon the throne ; signifying that 
the work is to be done particularly by human beings themselves ; 
the book of wisdom and knowledge awaits them, is held out to them, 
but they have to go and take it. They must take the forward step, 
make the continued faithful and determined effort, before they can 
expect to attain to any great degree of perfection. But the persist- 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 11 

ent faithful efforts are crowned with success. " Wilt thou know, O 
vain man, that faith without works is dead ? " 

Verse 8, to end of chapter : " And when he had taken the book, 
the four living creatures and four and twenty elders fell down 
before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials 
full of odors, which are the prayers of Saints. And they sung a 
new song, saying : Thou art worthy to take the book and to open 
the seals thereof ; for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God 
by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation ; 
and hast made us unto our God, kings and priests, and we shall 
reign on the earth. And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many 
angels round about the throne, and the living creatures and the 
elders : and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thou- 
sand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice : Worthy 
is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, 
and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature 
which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such 
as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying : Blessing 
and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four living 
creatures said : Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down 
and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever." Here, verses 8- 
10, the twenty-four elders or representatives of the Christian Church 
are shown as falling down before the Lamb and ascribing praise to 
him for what he had done for them : "because thou wast slain and 
hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, &c." It is to be remarked 
that they are not represented as giving to the lamb-like object the 
same kind of worship they give to him that sits upon the throne and 
lives for ever and ever. Their praise to the Lamb is in gratitude for 
what he had done for them in that, by the example of his self- 
sacrifice, he gives them wisdom and knowledge, and power and sal- 
vation, whereby they are made unto God kings and priests ; and 
they shall reign on the earth. This whole representation is, how- 
ever, symbolic, a carrying out of the Gospel's idea of Christ ; and 
the lamb-like symbol represents humanity redeemed and perfected 
by intelligent Christian self-denial, and godly living in the faith 
of Christ. The all-inclusive language in verses 11-14 bespeaks 
universal prevalence for the Christian religion, but become mystified; 
for see, verse 13, the same praise is ascribed to the Lamb that is 
given to him that sits upon the throne ; which was one of the results 
of the establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth 
century under Constantine and Theodosius, and was not peculiar to 
primitive Church times, when the faith was comparatively simple. 



12 CKEATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

But see, verse 14 and last, the elders still adhere to the worship only 
of him that sits upon the throne and liveth for ever and ever. True 
wisdom teaches us to worship the infinite and invisible Deity alone, 
which is neither an object of the sense nor of the imagination. The 
principal ideas set forth symbolically in this representation are those 
of the crucifixion of the flesh, with its affections, and lusts ; the 
living a life of entire and active godliness, and the following the 
intelligent elders in the worship of the infinite and invisible Deity 
alone, as may be in some inadequate sense symbolized by him that 
sat upon the throne. The ensuing Chapters, VI.-XIII. (at which 
last we propose to begin again with the interpretation of the 
prophecy), contain prophecies relating to the history of the Christian 
Church, and of the Roman Empire, with especial reference in some 
part, as ch. IX., to the Mohammedan and Turkish invasions, &c, as 
to the others. And now we shall give a chapter upon 

The History of the Primitive Christian Church. 

The greater part of the original Jewish converts to Christianity 
adhered to the ceremonies of their ancestors, and were desirous of 
imposing them upon the Gentiles who continually increased the 
number of the Christians. The first fifteen bishops, or rather pres- 
byters, of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews*; and the congrega- 
tion over which they presided united the law of Moses with the 
doctrines of Christ. It was natural that the primitive tradition of a 
Church which was founded shortly after the first introduction of 
Christianity should be acknowledged by all the other Christian 
Churches as the standard of orthodoxy. The distant Churches very 
frequently appealed to the authority of their venerable parent, and 
relieved her distresses by their voluntary contributions. But when nu- 
merous and opulent Christian societies were established in the great 
cities of the Empire, in Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and 
Rome, the reverence which Jerusalem had inspired to all the Gentile 
Christians insensibly diminished. The Jewish converts, or, as they 
came afterwards to be called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the founda- 
tion of the Church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increas- 
ing multitudes that from all the various religions of Paganism enlist- 
ed under the Christian banner ; and the Gentiles who, with the appro- 
bation of their peculiar apostle, had rejected the Mosaic ceremonies, at 
length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the same toleration 
which they had at first humbly solicited for their own practice. The 
ruin of the city, and of the temple and public religion of the Jews 
about the year 70 A. D., was severely felt by the Nazarenes. They 
retired just before the siege began to the little town of Pella, east of 



* These, as given in succession by Eusebius, are James, "the Lord's brother," Simeon, his 
cousin, Justus, Zaccheus, Tobias, Benjamin, John, Matthew, Philip, Seneca, Justus, Levi, Ephres, 
Joseph, Judas. With Mark, in the time of Hadrian, about 130 A. D., commenced a succession of 
Gentile bishops of whom he mentions thirteen or fifteen more. 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 13 

the Jordan, where the ancient Church languished above sixty years 
in solitude and obscurity. At length, in the reign of Hadrian, they 
again effected an entrance to the new Roman city, JElia Capitolina, 
which was founded on Mount Zion, on the ruins of old Jerusalem, 
by that Emperor, and from which all other Jews were excluded. 
This entrance the Nazarenes accomplished in a peculiar manner. 
They elected for their bishop Marcus, a Gentile, and most probably 
an Italian, or a native of one of the Latin provinces. Persuaded by 
him, the most considerable part of the congregation renounced the 
Mosaic law, in the practice of which they had persevered above a 
century. By this sacrifice of their prejudices and habits they pur- 
chased a free admission into the colony of Hadrian, and more firmly 
cemented their union with the general Christian Church. When 
this restoration to Mount Zion was effected, the crimes of heresy and 
schism were imputed to the remnant of the Nazarenes which refused 
to accompany their Latin bishop. They still preserved their habita- 
tion of Pella, spread themselves into the villages adjacent to Dam- 
ascus, and formed an inconsiderable Church in the city of Bercea, 
now Aleppo, in Syria. The name Nazarenes* was soon thought to be 
too honorable an appellation for these Christian Jews, and they 
received from their supposed scanty resources of mind and of estate 
the contemptuous epithet of Ebionites, that is, paupers. 

In a few years after the restoration of the church to Jerusalem it 
became a matter of dispute whether a man who had acknowledged 
Christ as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe the law of 
Moses, could possibly hope for salvation. Justin Martyr answered 
this question in the affirmative ; and though he expressed himself 
with the most guarded diffidence he ventured to determine in favor 
of such an imperfect Christian, if he were content to practice the 
Mosaic ceremonies without pretending to assert their general use or 
necessity. But when Justin was pressed to declare the sentiment of 
the Church he acknowledged there were very many among the ortho- 
dox Christians, who not only excluded their Judaizing brethren from 
the hope of salvation, but who denied intercourse with them in the 
common offices of friendship, hospitality, and social life. The more 
rigorous opinion prevailed over the milder ; and a line of demar- 
cation was drawn between the disciples of Moses and those of 
Christ. 

The Ebionites, rejected from one religion as apostates and from 
the other as heretics, found themselves compelled to assume a more 
decided character ; and although some traces of that sect may be 
discovered as late as the fourth century they insensibly melted away 
into the Church or the Synagogue. Of all the systems of Christianity 

* The Nazarenes, which were the stock of the Ebionites, we are to regard as the first founder* 
of Christianity: to that 6ect we are to look for the facts as to its origin. Whatever may have 
been their individual beliefs as to the character of Jesus, they appear to have bad no doubt 
that their man was crucified. 



14 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

it is said that of Abyssinia is the only one which adheres to the Mosaic 
rite. 

While the orthodox Chnrches preserved a just modinm between 
excessive veneration and improper contempt for the law of Moses, 
the various heretics deviated into equal, but opposite extremes. 
From the acknowledged truth of the Jewish religion the Ebionites 
had concluded that it could never be abolished. From its supposed 
imperfections the Gnostics * as hastily concluded that it never was 
instituted by the wisdom of the Deity. There are some objections 
seeming or real against the authority of Moses and the Old Testa- 
ment institutions which readily present themselves to the inquiring 
mind. These objections were eagerly embraced and petulantly urged 
by the Gnostics. As those heretics were for the most part opposed 
to the pleasures of sense they arraigned the polygamy of the patriarchs, 
the gallantries of David, and the seraglio of Solomon. The conquest 
of the land of Canaan and the extirpation of the unsuspecting natives 
they were at a loss how to reconcile with the common notions of 
humanity and justice. But when they recollected the sanguinary 
list of murders, of executions and of massacres which stain almost 
every page of the Jewish annals they acknowledged that the barbar- 
ous Israelites had exercised as much compassion towards their idol- 
atrous enemies as they had ever showed to their friends and country- 
men. Passing from the sectaries of the law to the law itself they 
asserted that it was impossible that a religion which consisted only 
of bloody sacrifices and trifling ceremonies, and whose rewards, as 
well as punishments were all of a carnal and temporal nature, could 
inspire self-denial or the practice of virtue. The Mosaic account of 
the creation and fall of man the Gnostics treated with derision. 
They would not listen with patience to the repose of the Deity after 
six days' labor, to the rib of Adam, the garden of Eden, the tree of 
life and of knowledge, the speaking serpent, the forbidden fruit, and 
the condemnation pronounced against human kind for the venial 
offence of their first parents. The God of Israel was represented by the 
Gnostics as a being liable to passion and to error, capricious in his 
favor, implacable in his resentment, meanly jealous of his superstitious 
worship, and confining his partial providence to a single people, and 
to this transitory life. In such a character they could discover none 
of the features of the all-wise and omnipotent universal parent. 
Thev allowed that the religion of the Jews was somewhat less 
criminal than the idolatry of the Gentiles ; but it was their fundamen- 
tal doctrine that the Christ that they acknowledged as the first and 
brightest emanation of the Deity appeared upon earth to rescue man- 



* A strong, considerably intelligent, and influential sect of primitive Christians. To the 
Gnostic name Tatian, mentioned on page 90, was attached. In his old age he founded in his 
native country, Assyria, a Gnostic sect chiefly distinguished for abstinence. 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 15 

kind from their various errors, and to reveal a new system of truth 
and perfection. The Gnostics, also called Docetse,* believed in the 
non-reality of a material body of Christ. Their doctrine was that 
instead of issuing from the womb of a virgin, as the orthodox have it, 
he had descended on the banks of the Jordan in the form of perfect 
manhood ; that he had imposed upon the senses of his enemies and 
his disciples : and that the ministers of Pilate had wasted their 
impotent rage upon an airy phantom that seemed to expire on the 
cross and after three days to rise from the dead. Educated in the 
Platonic school, they conceived that the brightest iEon or emanation 
of the Deity might assume the outward shape and visible appearance 
of a human being: but they did not conceive the imperfections of 
matter to be compatible with the purity of the celestial substauce. 
The most learned of the orthodox Fathers J held a kind of Gnostic 
doctrine ; and allowing that the literal sense is inconsistent with faith 
as well as reason, they take their stand and deem themselves secure 
behind the veil of allegory, which they claim is spread over most of 
the Scriptures. 

During the first one hundred years of Christianity its professors 
were indulged in a freer latitude of faith and practice than has ever 
been allowed in succeeding ages. As the spiritual authority of the 
prevailing party was exercised with increasing severity, and the terms 
of communion were gradually narrowed, many of its most respectable 
adherents who were called upon to renounce, were provoked to assert 
.heir private opinions, and openly to erect the standard of rebellion 
against the orthodox rule of the Church. The Gnostics were distin- 
guished as the most polite, the most learned, and the most wealthy 
of the Christian name ; and that general appellation which expresses 
a superiority in knowledge! was either assumed by themselves or ironi- 
cally bestowed by their envious adversaries. They were almost all 
of the races of the Gentiles, and their principal founders appear to 
have been natives of Syria and Egypt. The Gnostics blended with 
the faith of Christ many sublime but obscure tenets, which they de- 
rived from oriental philosophy and even from the religion of Zoroas- 
ter, concerning the eternity of matter, the existence of the two prin- 
ciples, and the mysterious hierarchy of the invisible world. As soon 
as they had launched out into that ocean of speculation they deliver- 
ed themselves to the guidance of a disordered imagination, and they 
were insensibly divided into more than fifty particular sects, of whom 
the most celebrated were the Basilidians, the Valentinians, the Mar- 



* From SokIcj to seem, as they held that Christ was only an appearance, and not a real 

body. 

t From yiyvkonG) to know. 

X There are some of those Fathers of the first three centuries who are now known In their 
own writings or in those of their contemporaries or successors. I may mention Tati:«n, a dis- 
ciple of Justin Martyr (see p. 90vol. 2); Clement of Alexandria, a disciple of I'antamus; Ori- 
gen, the most learned of the Fathers of this period. " In his commentaries" says Dr. (ieislcr, 

" he has furnished rich contributions towards the srrRmraalioa] Interpretation /.<■., by showing 
tie distinction between the literal, the moral, and the allegorical in the Scriptures) by which 



16 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

sionites, and, in a still later period, the Manichoeans. Each of these 
sects could boast of its bishops, and congregations, of its doctors and 
martyrs; and instead of the four Gospels adopted by the Church they 
produced a number of histories in which were related the actions and 
discourses of Christ and his apostles ; but we may remark here that 
Origen, that indefatigable writer, who spent his life in the study of 
the Scriptures, relies for their authenticity upon the inspired authority 
of the Church. 

The success of the Gnostics was rapid and extensive. They cover- 
ed Asia and Egypt, established themselves in Rome and penetrated to 
some extent into the provinces of the West. They arose in the first 
and second centuries, flourished in the third, and were depressed in 
the fourth and fifth by the prevalence of the Orthodox, or Trinitarians, 
and the superior ascendant of the ruling power. 

Whatever difference of opinion might subsist between the Ortho- 
dox, the Ebionites, and the Gnostics concerning the divinitv or obli- 
gation of the Mosaic law, they were all equally animated by exclusive 
zeal ; and by the same abhorrence for idolatry which had distinguish- 
ed the Jews from the other nations of the ancient world. The phi- 
losopher who understood the systems of polytheism as compositions of 
human fraud and error could disguise a smile of contempt under a 
mask of devotion without fearing that either the mockery or the com- 
pliance would subject him to the resentment of any invisible, or, as 
he conceived them, imaginary powers. But the primitive Christians 
were accustomed to look upon the established religions of Paganism 
in a much more odious and formidable light. It was their invariable 
sentiment that the demons were the authors, the patrons, and the 
objects of idolatry. Those rebellious spirits, they thought, which had 
been degraded from the rank of ancrels, and cast down into the infer- 
nal pit, were still permitted to roam upon the earth to torment the 
bodies, and seduce the minds of sinful men. The demons soon dis- 
covered the natural propensity of the human heart towards devotion, 
and artfully withdrawing the worship of mankind from their Creator, 
they usurped the place and honors of the supreme Deity. By the 
success of their usurpations they at once gratified their pride and re- 
venge, and obtained the only consolation of which they were yet sus- 
ceptible, the hope of involving mankind in a participation in their 
guilt and miseries. It was imagined that they had distributed among 
themselves the most important characters of polytheism, one demon 
assuming the name and attributes of Jupiter, another of .ZEsculapius, a 
third of Venus, and a fourth of Apollo ; and that by the advantage 
of their long experience and aerial nature, they were enabled to ex- 
ecute with skill and dignity the parts which they had undertaken. 

means he has become the chief source for succeeding commentators." Also, Heraclas, Diony- 
sus, etc. In common with the Docetae they believed that their Gnosis had been handed down as 
a mysterious doctrkie and should be communicated only to the initiated. Their doctrine with 
respect to the character and person of Christ was a refined Christian or Christian Gnostic not 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 17 

They lurked in the temples, instituted festivals and sacrifices, invent- 
ed fables, pronounced oracles, and were frequently allowed to perform 
miracles. The Christians who, by the interposition of invisible evil 
spirits, could so readily explain every preternatural appearance were 
disposed to admit the most extravagant fictions of the Pagan mythol- 
ogy. But the Christian's belief was accompanied with horror. The 
most trifling mark of respect paid to the national religion he consider- 
ed as a direct homage yielded to the demon, and as an act of rebellion 
against the majesty of God. 

In consequence of these opinions, the Christian regarded it as his 
first and most imperative duty to preserve himself pure and uncon- 
taminated from the practice of idolatry. The religions of the nations 
were not merely speculative doctrines professed in the schools or 
preached in the temples. The innumerable deities and rites of 
polytheism were interwoven with all the circumstances of business 
or pleasures of public or private life ; and it appeared impossible to 
escape the observance of them without at the same time renounc- 
ing all the offices and amusements of society, and all commerce with 
mankind. We in the present age can hardly conceive the difficulties 
which the primitive Christians experienced in preserving themselves 
from the countenancing and practice of idolatry. 

The doctrine of a future state was scarcely considered among the 
polytheists of Greece and Rome as a fundamental article of faith. 
They understood the providence of the gods as it related to public 
c®mmunities rather than to private individuals, to be principally dis- 
played upon the theatre of this visible world. The petitions offer- 
ed on the altars of Jupiter or Apollo expressed the anxiety of their 
worshippers for temporal happiness, without regard to a future life. 
The doctrine of the soul's immortality was inculcated with more dili- 
gence and success in India, Assyria, Egypt and Gaul ; and, since we 
cannot attribute such a difference to the superior knowledge of the 
barbarians, we may ascribe it to the influence of an established priest- 
hood, which employed it as a motive tending to the practice of vir- 
tue, and as an instrument of their ambition. We would naturally 
expect that a principle so essential to religion would have been re- 
vealed in the clearest terms in the Mosaic law, and inculcated by 
the hereditary priesthood of the Jewish nation. But we discover 
that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is omitted in the 
law of Moses. After the return of the exiled Jews from Babylon, 
and after Ezra had restored the ancient records of their religion, two 
celebrated sects, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, gradually arose 
at Jerusalem. The former, belonging to the more opulent ranks of 
society, adhered strictly to the literal sense of the Mosaic law, and 



18 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

rejected the immortality of the soul as an opinion which received no 
support from the book which they revered as the only rule of life. To 
the authority of the Scriptures the Pharisees added that of tradition; 
and they accepted under the name of tradition, several speculative 
tenets from the religions of the Eastern nations. The doctrines of 
fate or predestination, of angels and spirits, and of a future state of 
rewards and punishments were in the number of the new articles of 
their belief: and as the Pharisees, by their austere manners, had 
drawn into their party the body of the Jewish people, the immortali- 
ty of the soul became the prevailing sentiment of the synagogue 
under the reign of the AsmonEean princes and priests. As soon as the 
Jews admitted the idea of a future state, they embraced it with 
that zeal which has always so characterized their nation. 

When the promise of eternal life and happiness was proposed 
to mankind on condition of adopting and practising the faith of the 
Gospel, it is no wonder that so advantageous an offer should have 
been accepted by great numbers of every religion, rank, and pro- 
vince of the Roman Empire. The ancient Christians were animated 
by a contempt for their present existence, and by a confidence of 
immortality, of which the doubtful and imperfect faith of modern 
ages cannot give us any adequate notion. The influence of the doc- 
trines of the primitive Church was much strengthened by an ojrinion 
which universally prevailed therein, that the end of the world and 
the kingdom of heaven were at hand. The near approach of this 
awful event they believed to be foretold in the Gospels, and those 
who understood in their literal sense the discourses of Christ, as rep- 
resented there, expected the second and glorious coming of the Son 
of Man in the clouds before that generation should have passed away 
which was witness of the calamities of the Jews under Vespasian or 
Hadrian. The revolution of eighteen centuries shows us the fallacy 
of interpreting these prophecies literally ; but as this opinion subsist- 
ed in the Church it was productive of the most salutary effects on 
the faith and practice of the Christians, who lived in the awful and 
constant expectation of that moment when the globe itself and all 
the various races of mankind should tremble at the appearance of 
the Divine Judge. The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millen- 
nium was immediately connected with the second coming of Christ. 
As the works of creation had been finished in six days their present 
state, according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet 
Elijah, was limited to six thousand years. By the same analogy it 
was inferred that this long period of toil and contention which was 
now almost elapsed would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a 
thousand years, and that Christ, with the triumphant band of the 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 19 

Saints and the elect who had escaped death (see I. Thessalonians IV., 
15-18), or who had been miraculously revived, would reign upon earth 
till the time appointed for the last and general resurrection. So pleas- 
ing was this hope to the mind of the Christians that they quickly 
adorned the new Jerusalem, the seat of the blissful kingdom, with all 
the gayest colors of the imagination. The inhabitants of this millennial 
paradise were still supposed to retain their human nature and senses 
after as before the resurrection. A city was erected of gold and 
precious stones, and a supernatural plenty of corn and wine was 
bestowed on the adjacent territory, in the free enjoyment of whose 
spontaneous productions the happy and benevolent people were 
never to be restrained by any jealous laws of exclusive property. 
The assurance of such a Millennium was carefully inculcated by a 
succession of Fathers from Justin Martyr and Irenasus, who, it was 
said, conversed with the immediate disciples of the apostles, down 
to Lactantius, who was preceptor to the son of Constantine. Such 
appears to have been the reigning sentiment of the orthodox be- 
lievers, and it seems so well adapted to the desires and apprehen- 
sions of mankind that it must have contributed in a very considera- 
ble degree to the progress of the Christian Church. But when the 
Christian edifice was almost completed the temporary support was 
laid aside. The doctrine of Christ's literal reign upon earth was at 
first regarded as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as 
a doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the 
absurd invention of fanaticism and heresy. 

Whilst the happiness and glory of a millennial reign was prom- 
ised to the true Christians, the most dreadful calamities were pro- 
nounced against an unbelieving world. The edification of a new 
Jerusalem was to advance by equal steps with the destruction of the 
mystic Babylon ; and as long as the Emperors who reigned before 
Constantine persisted in the profession of idolatry the epithet of 
Babylon was applied to the city and empire of Rome. A regular 
series was concocted of all the evils, physical and moral, which can 
afflict a flourishing nation ; intestine discords and the invasion of the 
fierce barbarians from the unknown regions of the North; pestilence 
and famine, comets and eclipses, earthquakes and inundations. All 
these were only so many preparatory and ominous signs of the great 
catastrophe of Rome, when the country of the Catos, the Scipios, and 
Caesars should be consumed by a flame from heaven, and the city of 
the seven hills, with her palaces, her temples, and her triumphal arches, 
should be buried in a vast lake of fire and brimstone. The country which 
from religious motives, lmd been chosen for the origin and principal 
scene of the conflagration was the best adapted for that purpose by 



20 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

natural and physical causes, by its deep caverns, beds of sulphur, and 
numerous volcanoes, of which those of Vesuvius, of Etna, and of 
Lipari exhibit but an imperfect representation. And the calmest and 
most intrepid skeptic, in the then state of scientific knowledge, could 
hardly refuse to allow that the destruction of the system of the world 
by fire was in itself not improbable. The Christian also founded his 
belief much less on the deduction of reason than on the authority 
of tradition, and his interpretation of Scripture ; expected it with 
terror and confidence as a certain approaching event ; and as his 
mind was perpetually filled with the solemn idea he considered every 
disaster that happened to the Empire as an infallible symptom of an 
expiring world. 

The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the ancients 
on account of their ignorance or incredulity with respect to Chris- 
tianity, implies an idea offensive to reason, and highly presumptuous. 
But the primitive Church, whose faith was of a firm consistence, 
delivered over without hesitation to eternal torture the far greater 
part of mankind. They might perhaps indulge a charitable hope in 
favor of Socrates, or some other sages of antiquity, who consulted 
the benefit of mankind according to the light of reason, before that 
of the Gospel had arisen. But they unanimously affirmed that those 
who, since the introduction of Christianity, had obstinately persist- 
ed in the worship of the demons, neither deserved nor could expect 
a pardon from the justice of the Deity. These rigid sentiments, 
which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused 
a spirit of bitterness into a system otherwise of love and harmony. 
The ties of blood and friendship were frequently torn asunder by 
the difference of religious faith ; and the Christians who in this world 
found themselves oppressed by the power of the Pagans, were some- 
times reduced by resentment and spiritual pride to delight in the 
prospect of their future triumph. " You are fond of spectacles,'' 
exclaims Tertullian ; " expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last 
and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how 
laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud mon- 
archs, so many fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness ; 
so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefy- 
ing in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians ; so 
many deluded philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their de- 
luded scholars : so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribu- 
nal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians more tuneful 
in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers — " but 
feelings of humanity suggest to us to draw a veil over this fearful 
description which the fierce African (rather an exception, indeed, in 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 21 

this respect, to the generality of the early Christian writers), still 
pursues in a long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms. 

But beyond doubt there were many among the primitive Chris- 
tians of a temper more corresponding to the meekness and charity of 
their profession. There were many who felt a sincere compassion 
for their friends and countrymen, and who exerted their zeal and 
influence to save them from impending destruction. The careless 
and ignorant polytheist, assailed by new and unexpected terrors, 
against which neither his priests nor philosophers offered him any 
certain protection, was frequently terrified and subdued by the menace 
of eternal damnation. His fears might assist the progress of his 
faith and reason ; and if he could only persuade himself that the 
Christian religion might possibly be true it became an easy task to 
convince him that it was the safest party that he could possibly em- 
brace. 

The supernatural gifts, too, which were claimed to be exercised 
by the Christians above the rest of mankind, must have conduced to 
their own comfort, and frequently to the conversion of infidels. 
The expulsion of evil spirits from the bodies of those persons whom 
they had tormented was considered a signal though ordinary triumph 
of the Christian faith, and is repeatedly urged by the ancient Fathers 
as the most convincing evidence of the truth of Christianity. The 
ceremony was usually performed in a public manner, and in the pre- 
sence of a great number of spectators ; the patient was relieved by 
the power or skill of the exorcist, and the vanquished demon was 
heard to confess that he was one of the fabled gods of antiquity that 
had impiously usurped the adoration of mankind. The reader can- 
not fail to see how such effects and phenomena may have been pro- 
duced after reading the illustrations in the case of the miracles of 
the Gospels ; still considering that they may have been produced in 
other ways by the influence of the Holy Spirit. But the most mira- 
culous cure of diseases of the most inveterate and preternatural kind 
can no longer occasion us any surprise when we are informed that 
in the days of Irenasus, about the end of the second century, the 
resurrection of the dead was very far from being esteemed an un- 
common event. Dr. Middleton, however, thus objects to this state- 
ment of Irenseus : " It is very strange that from the time of the 
apostles there is not a single instance of this miracle to be found in 
the three first centuries : except a single case slightly intimated in 
in Eusebiusfrom the works of Papias,* and which he seemed to rank 
among the other fabulous stories delivered by that weak man." And 

* The preceptor of Iremeus and who claimed to have conversed with the apostle John. 
Such is how tradition comes to us. Eusebius, in his Chronicon (Olympic 220), allows without 
hesitation'Papias to have been the disciple of the Apostle John ; but in nia Eocles. Hist, (III. 89) 
he declares that he was only the pupil of a certain presbyter John. Some have enquired what 
right he had to do so? 



22 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Bp. Douglass considers Irenaeus to speak of what had " been per 
formed formerly," not in his own time. At such a period, however, 
when faith could boast of so many wonderful victories over death, 
it seems difficult to account for the skepticism of these philosophers 
who still rejected and derided the Christian doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion. A noble Greek had rested upon this important ground the 
whole controversy, and promised Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, that 
if he could be gratified with the sight of a single person who had 
been actually raised from the dead, he would immediately embrace 
the Christian religion. It is to be remarked that this prelate, how- 
ever anxious he may have been for the conversion of his friend, 
thought proper to decline this fair and reasonable challenge. 

It is evident that the unresisting softness of temper, so con- 
spicuous among the primitive Christians of the first three centuries, 
proved of some benefit to the advancement of their cause. The most 
credulous or curious among the Polytheists were often persuaded to 
enter into a society which asserted an actual claim of miraculous 
powers. The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, 
and their minds were exercised to the habit of believing the most 
extraordinary events. They felt, or they fancied, that on every 
side they were incessantly assaulted by demons, comforted by visions, 
instructed by prophecy, and sometimes delivered from sickness, 
danger, and death by the supplications of the Church. The real or 
imaginary prodigies of which they so frequently conceived them- 
selves to be the objects, the instruments, or the spectators, happily 
disposed them to adopt with the same ease the wonders of the 
evangelic narratives ; and thus miracles which did not exceed the 
measure of their own experience inspired them with the most lively 
assurance of mysteries which were represented to surpass the limits 
of their understanding. It is this deep impression of supernatural 
doctrines 'which has been so much celebrated under the name of 
faith ; a state of mind described as the surest pledge of the divine 
favor, and of future felicity, and recommended as the first, perhaps 
the only real merit of a Christian. According to the more rigid 
Christian doctors, even to our own time, the moral virtues, which 
may be equally practised by infidels, are destitute of any value or 
efficacy in the work of our justification ; a doctrine which is carried 
out to its full extent by those of a Jesuitical spirit in every Chris- 
tian Church and which bears its own refutation, not to mention the 
crooked practices of some of its professors. The conduct, however, 
of the Jesuit missionaries, who have so much bettered the condition 
of the heathen world, is forever praiseworthy. 

But the primitive Christians were accustomed to demonstrate 
their faith by their virtues ; and it was justly supposed that the 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 23 

divine persuasion which enlightened or subdued the understanding 
did at the same time purify the heart and direct the actions of the 
believer. The first apologists for Christianity who justify the inno- 
cence of their brethren, and the writers of a later age who celebrate 
the sanctity of their ancestors, display in the most vivid colors the 
reformation of manners which was introduced to the world by the 
preaching of the Gospel. It was a very ancient reproach of the 
Pagans against the Christians that the latter allured into their 
society the most atrocious and abandoned criminals, who, as soon as 
they were touched by a sense of remorse, were easily persuaded to 
wash away in the waters of baptism the guilt of their past conduct, 
for which the temples of the gods refused to grant them any expia- 
tion. But this seeming reproach, when cleared from misrepresenta- 
tions, contributes perhaps as much to the honor as it did to the 
increase of the Church. The friends of Christianity may acknowl- 
edge without shame that many of their most eminent saints had 
been, previous to their baptism, abandoned sinners. Those persons 
who, in the world, followed, though perhaps imperfectly, the dictates 
of benevolence and propriety, derived such a calm satisfaction from 
the consciousness of their own rectitude as rendered them much less 
susceptible of the sudden emotions of shame, of grief, and of terror 
which have given birth to so many wonderful conversions. After 
the example of their divine master, as set forth in the Gospels, the 
Christian missionaries of this age did not disdain the society of men, 
and of women, oppressed by the consciousness and often by the 
effects of their vices. As they emerged from sin and superstition to 
the glorious hope of immortality they resolved to devote themselves 
to a life, not only of penitence but of virtue ; and the desire of per- 
fection became the ruling passion of their soul. When the Chris- 
tians of Bythinia were brought before the tribunal of the younger 
Pliny, under certain accusations, they assured the Proconsul that 
far from being engaged in an unlawful conspiracy, they were bound 
by a solemn obligation to abstain from the commission of those 
crimes which disturb the private or the public peace of society, from 
theft, robbery, adultery, perjury and fraud. And this blamelessness 
was admitted by the candid and enlightened Roman, so far as his 
opportunity of observing the Christians allowed him to judge. Near 
a century after this Tertullian with an honest pride, could boast 
that very few Christians had suffered by the hand of the executioner, 
except on account of their religion. Their serious and sequestered 
life, averse to the gay luxury of the age, inured them to chastity, 
temperance, economy, and all the sober and domestic virtues. The 
contempt of the world exercised them in the habits of humility, 



24 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

meekness and patience. The more they were persecuted the more 
closely they adhered to each other. Their mutual charity and un- 
suspecting confidence has been remarked upon by infidels, and was 
too, often abused by perfidious friends. It is an honorable circum- 
stance for the morals of the primitive Christians that even their 
faults, or rather errors, were derived from an excess of virtue. Some 
of the bishops and fathers of the Church, whose evidence attests, 
and whose authority might influence the professions, the principles, 
and even the practice of their contemporaries, had studied the Scrip- 
tures with less skill than devotion ; and they often received in the 
most literal sense those rigid precepts of the Gospels to which suc- 
ceeding commentators have applied a figurative mode of interpreta- 
tion. Ambitious to exalt the perfection of the Gospel above the wisdom 
of philosophy, the zealous fathers have carried the duties of self-mor- 
tification, of purity and patience to a height which one would think 
scarcely possible for a human being to attain, much less to preserve. 
Aspiring to imitate the perfection of angels they disdained, or they 
affected to disdain, every earthly and corporeal delight. The first 
sensation of pleasure was marked as the first moment of the abuse of 
the senses. The candidate for heaven was instructed, not only to 
resist the grosser allurements of the taste or smell, but even to shut 
his ears against the harmonies of profane music, and to view with 
indifference even the most finished productions of human art. Gay 
apparel, magnificent houses, and elegant furniture were supposed to 
unite the double guilt of pride and of sensuality ; a simple and morti- 
fied appearance was more becoming to the Christian, who was certain 
of his sins, and doubtful of his salvation. In their censures of luxury 
the fathers are exceedingly minute and circumstantial ; and among 
the various articles which excite their pious indignation we may 
mention false hair, garments of any color except white, instruments 
of music, vases of gold and silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed 
his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, 
the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, 
in the language of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an 
impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. When Christian- 
ity was introduced among the rich and polite, the observance of those 
rules was left to such as aspired to superior sanctity. But the virtue 
of the primitive Christians, like that of the primitive Romans, was to a 
large extent guarded by poverty and ignorance, since it can hardly 
be said that the less wealthy ranks of mankind can claim a merit for 
foregoing that which they are not able to possess; and still -if men 
be real Christians (whether they be poor or rich) they are infinitely 
more content and godly without the use of luxuries. Modesty in 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 25 

moderation is commendable in all, for it must be confessed that the 
poor in many cases are inclined to be more vain than they should be 
as well as the rich. 

The fathers were correspondingly particular in the restraints 
which they imposed upon the commerce of the sexes. It was theii 
unanimous sentiment that a first marriage was all that was requisite 
for the purposes of nature and of society. The marriage tie was 
defined as a resemblance of the mystic union between Christ and his 
Church, and was pronounced indissoluble either by divorce or death. 
The practice of second nuptials was branded with the name of a 
legal adultery, and the persons who were guilty of such a scandalous 
offence against Christian purity were excluded from the honors and 
from the alms of the Church. They considered a state of celibacy 
and a godly life as the nearest approach to the divine perfection. It 
was often with difficulty that ancient Rome could maintain the in- 
stitution of six vestal virgins ; but the primitive Church was filled 
with a great number of persons of either sex who had devoted them- 
selves to the practice of perpetual chastity. A few of these occa- 
sionally, among whom we may reckon the celebrated Origen, judged 
it most prudent to disarm the tempter by marriage. Among the 
Christian ascetics, however (a name which from their peculiar man- 
ner of life they soon acquired), many, as they were less presumptuous 
were probably more successful. The loss of sensual pleasure was 
compensated in them by spiritual pride ; and it was in praise of these 
chaste spouses of Christ that the Fathers have poured forth the stream 
of their eloquence. Such are the early traces of monastic principles 
and institutions which in a subsequent age counterbalanced all the 
advantages of Christianity. 

While the primitive Christians inculcated the maxims of passive 
obedience they were not inclined to take any active part in the civil 
administration of the government, or the military service of the em- 
pire. This seeming indifference to the public welfare exposed them 
to the contempt and reproaches of the Pagans, who often asked what 
must be the fate of the Empire, attacked on all sides by the barbar- 
ians, if all the Roman citizens should adopt the pusillanimous senti- 
ments of the new sect. To this reproachful question the Christian 
apologists returned obscure and ambiguous answers, as they were 
unwilling to reveal the secret cause of their security, the expectation 
that before the conversion of mankind was accomplished, war, 
government, the Roman Empire, and the world itself should be no 
more. 

But though the primitive Christians were dead to the pleasures 
and business of the world, their love of action, which could not be 



26 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

extinguished, found a new occupation in the government of the 
Church. The safety of their society, its advancement and honor 
produced in their minds a spirit of patriotism such as the early 
Romans had felt for the republic, and sometimes also of a similar 
indifference in the use of whatever means might probably conduce 
to so desirable an end. The ambition of elevating themselves to the 
honors and offices of the Church they disguised by the laudable 
profession of devoting to the public good the power and considera- 
tion which, for that purpose only, it became their duty to solicit. 
In the exercise of their office they were frequently called upon to 
detect the errors of heresy or the arts of faction, to oppose the de- 
signs of perfidious brethren, to stigmatize their characters with in- 
famy, and to expel them from a society whose peace and harmony 
they had attempted to disturb. The ecclesiastical rulers of the 
Christians were taught to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the 
innocence of the dove : but as the former was subtile so the latter 
gradually became corrupted with the habits of government. In the 
Church, as in the world, those who were placed in any prominent 
station rendered themselves considerable by their eloquence and 
firmness, by their knowledge of mankind, and by their dexterity in 
business ; and while they concealed from others, and perhaps from 
themselves, the secret motives of their conduct, they too frequently 
displayed all the turbulent passions of active life, which were tinc- 
tured with an additional degree of bitterness and obstinacy from the 
infusion of spiritual zeal. 

Those who have studied the subject with candor and impartiality 
are of the opinion that those primitive Christians to whom the name 
of apostles is ascribed declined the office of legislation, and rather 
chose to endure some partial scandals and divisions than to exclude 
the Christians of future ages from the liberty of varying their forms 
of ecclesiastical government, according to the changes of time and 
circumstances. The scheme of policy which was adopted during 
the first century may be discovered from the practice of the Churches 
of Jerusalem, Ephesus, and Corinth. The Christian societies which 
were organized in the cities of the Roman Empire were united only 
by the ties of mutual faith and charity. Equality and independence 
formed the basis of their internal constitution. The want of disci- 
pline and human learning was partially supplied by the assistance of 
the prophets, who appear to have had their spiritual call to that 
function without distinction of sex or natural abilities, and who, as 
often as they felt the impulse of inspiration, poured forth their 
prophecies in the Christian assemblies. But these extraordinary 
gifts were frequently abused or misapplied by the prophetic teachers. 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 27 

They displaced them at an improper season, presumptuously disturb- 
ed the service of the assembly, and by their misdirected zeal, or their 
' vanity, they introduced into the Church of Corinth a long and 
melancholy train of disorders. As the institution of prophets be- 
came useless, and even harmful, their powers were withdrawn and 
their office abolished. The public functions of religion were then 
solely entrusted to the established ministers of the Church, the bish- 
ops and presbyters ; two appellations which in their first origin 
appear to have distinguished the same office and the same order of 
persons. The name presbyter was expressive of their age, or rather 
of their gravity and wisdom. The title of bishop Q-c^/.o-o^) denoted 
their inspection over the faith and morals of the Christians who were 
committed to their pastoral care. In proportion to the number of 
the faithful in the infant congregations a larger or a smaller number 
of these episcopal presbyters guided with equal authority and united 
counsels. 

But the most perfect equality of freedom requires the directing 
hand of an acknowledged superior ; and the order of public proceed- 
ings soon introduced the office of a president, at least, with the 
authority of collecting the sentiments, and of executing the resolu- 
tions of the assembly. A regard for the public order and tranquillity 
which would have been so frequently interrupted by annual, or by 
occasional elections, induced the primitive Christians to constitute 
an honorable and perpetual rulership, and to choose one of the wisest 
and the most holy among their presbyters, to execute during his life 
the duties of their ecclesiastical Governor. It was under these cir- 
cumstances that the lofty title of bishop began to raise itself above 
the humble appellation of presbyter or elder ; and while the latter 
remained the most natural distinction for the members of every 
Christian senate, the former was appropriated to the dignity of its 
new president. The episcopal form of government, which appears 
to have been instituted before the end of the first century, was 
adopted without delay by all the societies which were already scat- 
tered over the Empire, had acquired in an early period the sanction 
of antiquity, and is still looked upon by the most numerous branches 
of the Christian Church as a primitive and even a divine institution. 
It need hardly be observed that the pious and humble presbyters or 
elders, who were first dignified with the title of bishop, could not 
possess, and would probably have rejected the power and pomp which 
afterwards pertained to the Roman Pontiffs, or now pertain to a 
German or English prelate. Their jurisdiction, which was originally 
of a spiritual, though in most cases of a temporal nature also, we 
may define in a few words. It consisted in the administration of 



28 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the sacraments and discipline of the Church, the superintendence 
of religious ceremonies, which insensibly increased in number and 
variety, the consecration of ecclesiastical ministers, to whom the 
bishop assigned their respective functions, the management of the 
public fund, and the determination of all such differences as the 
faithful were unwilling to expose before the tribunal of an idolatrous 
judge. These powers, during a short period, were exercised accord- 
ing to the advice of the college of presbyters, and with the consent 
and approbation of the assembly of Christians. The primitive bishops 
were considered as only the first of their equals, and as the honorable 
servants of a free people. Whenever the episcopal chair became 
vacant by death, a new president was chosen among the presbyters 
by the suffrages of the whole congregation, every member of which 
supposed himself invested with a sacred and sacerdotal character in 
respect to holiness and virtue. Such was the mild and equal con- 
stitution by which the Christians were governed for more than a 
hundred years after the first introduction of Christianity. Every 
society formed within itself a separate and independent republic ; and, 
although the most widely separated of these little states maintained 
a mutual and friendly intercourse of letters and deputations, the 
Christian world was not yet connected by any supreme authority or 
legislative council. As the numbers of the faithful gradually mul- 
tiplied they discovered the advantages which might result from a 
close union of their interests and designs. Towards the end of the 
second century the Churches of Greece and Asia adopted the insti- 
tution of provincial synods. It was soon established as a custom 
and as a law that the bishops of the independent Churches should 
meet in the capital of each province at the stated periods of spring 
and autumn. They were assisted in their deliberations by the advice 
of a few distinguished presbyters, and attended by the presence of a 
listening multitude. Their decrees, which were styled canons, regu- 
lated every important controversy of faith and discipline. The in- 
stitution of synods was so well suited to private ambition and to 
public interest that, in the space of a few years, it was adopted 
throughout the whole Empire. A regular correspondence was estab- 
lished between the provincial councils, which mutually communicated 
and approved their respective proceedings, and the universal Chris- 
tian Church soon assumed the form and acquired the strength of a 
great federative republic. 

As the legislative authorit}^ of the several Churches was insensi- 
bly superseded by the use of councils, the bishops obtained by their 
alliance a much larger share of executive and arbitrary power; 
and as soon as they became connected by a sense of their common 



PKIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 29 

interest they were enabled to attack, with combined vigor, the orig- 
inal rights of their clergy and people. The bishops of the third 
century imperceptibly changed the language of exhortation into 
that of command, scattered the seeds of future usurpations, and sup- 
plied by Scripture metaphor and declamatory rhetoric their deficiency 
of force and reason. They magnified the unity and power of the 
Church as it was represented in the episcopal office, of which each 
bishop enjoyed an equal portion. Princes and magistrates, it was 
often repeated, might boast a claim to a transitory earthly dominion ; 
but it was the episcopal authority alone which was derived from 
the Deity, and extended itself over this and over another world. 
The bishops were the vicegerents of Christ, the successors of the 
apostles, and the mystic substitutes of the high priests of the 
Israelitish Church. By their exclusive privilege of conferring the 
sacerdotal order, they invaded the freedom of the clerical elections ; 
and if, in the administration of the Church, they still consulted the 
judgment of the elders, or the inclination of the people, they took 
great care to inculcate the merit of such a voluntary condescension. 
The bishops acknowledged the superior authority which resided 
in the assembly of their brethren ; but in the government of his pecu- 
liar diocese, each of them exacted from his flocks the same implicit 
obedience as if that favorite metaphor had been literally just, and 
as if the shepherd were of a superior nature to that of his sheep. 
This obedience, however, was not imposed without some efforts on 
one side and some resistance on the other. The democratic part of 
the constitution was, in many places, very warmly supported by the 
zealous or interested opposition of the inferior clergy. But their 
patriotism received the ignominious epithets of faction and schism ;. 
and the episcopal cause was indebted for its rapid progress to the 
labors of many active prelates who, like Cyprian of Carthage, could 
reconcile the arts of a most ambitious statesman with the Christian 
virtues which secured him the character of a saint and martyr. 

The same causes which at first operated to destroy the equality 
of the presbyters introduced among the bishops a pre-eminence of 
rank and from thence a superiority of jurisdiction. As often as they 
met in the provincial synod, which happened each spring and autumn, 
the difference of personal merit and reputation was very sensibly 
felt among the members of the assembly and the multitude was 
governed by the wisdom and eloquence of the few. But the order 
of public proceedings required a more regular and less individious 
distinction ; the office of perpetual presidents in the councils of each 
Province was conferred upon the bishops of the principal cities ; and 
these aspiring prelates, who soon acquired the lofty titles of Metro- 



30 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

politans and Primates, secretly prepared themselves to usurp over 
their episcopal brethren a like authority to that which the bishops 
had so lately' assumed above the college of presbyters. Nor was it 
long before an emulation of pre-eminence and power prevailed among 
the Metropolitans themselves, each of them affecting to display in 
the most pompous terms the temporal honors and advantages of the 
city over which he presided ; the number and wealth of the Chris- 
tians that were subject to their pastoral care; the saints and martyrs 
that had arisen among them ; and the purity with which they had 
preserved the orthodox faith as it had been handed down through a 
series of bishops from the apostle or apostolic disciple to which the 
founding of their church was ascribed. From every cause either of a 
civil or of an ecclesiastical nature it was easy to foresee that Rome 
must enjoy the respect, and might soon claim the obedience of the pro- 
vinces. The Roman Church was the greatest, the most numerous, 
and, in regard to the west, the most ancient of the Christian establish- 
ments, many of which had been founded by the labor of her mission- 
aries. Instead of one apostolic founder, the utmost boast of Antioch, 
or Corinth, or Ephesus, the city of the seven hills was supposed to 
have been honored with the preaching and martyrdom of two emi- 
nent apostles ; and the bishops of Rome ingeniously claimed the in- 
heritance of whatsoever prerogatives were attributed either to the 
person or the office of St. Peter. The bishops of Italy and the pro- 
vinces were disposed to allow them a primacy of order and associa- 
tion (such was the way they expressed it) in the Christian aristoc- 
racy. But the power of a monarch was rejected with abhorrence, 
and the aspiring genius of Rome encountered with the nations of 
'Asia and Africa a more determined resistance to her spiritual than 
she had formerly to her temporal dominion. The bishop of Carthage, 
the patriotic Cyprian, who himself ruled with the most absolute sway 
the Church of Carthage and the provincial synods, opposed with res- 
olution and success the ambition of the Roman bishops, artfully con- 
nected his own cause with that of the Eastern bishops, and like 
Hannibal, sought out new allies in the heart of Asia. If this Punic 
war was carried on without any blood being shed it was owing 
much more to the weakness than to the moderation of the contending 
parties. Invectives and excommunications, which were their only 
weapons, they hurled at each other during the whole controversy 
with equal fury and devotion. 

The progress of ecclesiastical authority gave rise to the distinc- 
tion of the clergy and laity, which had before been unknown to the 
Greeks and Romans. The latter of these appellations comprehended 
the great mass of the Christian people, the former that select portion 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 31 

which had been set apart for the service of religion ; a class of men 
which has formed an important, though not always an edifying sub- 
ject of history. These mutual hostilities sometimes disturbed the 
peace of the early Church ; but their zeal and activity advanced the 
common cause, and the love of power, which, under the most plausi- 
ble disguises, could insinuate itself into the breast of bishops and 
martyrs, impelled them to increase the number of their subjects, and 
to enlarge the extent of the Christian Empire. They were, during 
the period we are considering destitute of any temporal force, and 
for a long time discouraged and depressed, rather than assisted by 
the civil magistrate ; but they had acquired, and they employed 
within their own society, the two most effectual instruments of 
power, rewards and punishments ; the former derived from the pious 
contributions, the latter from the spiritual apprehensions of their 
people. 

The way in which baptism was performed in the primitive 
Church appears from the strongest historical evidence to have been 
by immersion. Dr. Mosheim, in his Church history, in speaking of 
the first century, says ; " The sacrament of baptism was administered 
in this century without the public assemblies, in places appointed 
and prepared for the pnrpose, and was performed by immersion of 
the whole body in the baptismal font. 

At first it was usual for all who labored in the propagation of 
the Grospel to be present at that solemn ceremony ; and it was also 
customary that the converts should be baptized and received into the 
Church by those under whose ministry they had embraced the 
Christian doctrine. But this custom was soon changed. When the 
Christian Churches were well established and governed by a system 
of fixed laws, then the right of baptizing converts was vested in the 
bishop alone. This right, indeed, he conferred upon the presbyters 
and chorepiscopi, or country bishops, when the bounds of the Church 
were still further enlarged, reserving, however, to himself the confir- 
mation of the baptism which was administered by a presbyter. Th&re 
were doubtless several circumstantial rites and ceremonies observed 
in the administration of this sacrament for the sake of order and de- 
cency. Of these, however, it is not easy, nor perhaps possible, to 
give a certain or satisfactory account, since upon this subject we are 
too much exposed to the illusion which arises from confounding the 
customs of the primitive times with those of succeeding ages." * 

In speaking of the practice of the same right in the second centu- 
ry he says : " The sacrament of baptism was administered publicly 
twice every year at the festivals of Easter and Pentecost, or Whit- 

* Mosheiin's Ecclesiastical Hist. Cent I. 



32 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

suntide, either by the bishop, or the presbyters, in consequence of 
his authorization and appointment. The persons that were to be bap- 
tized, after they had repeated the creed, confessed and renounced 
their sins, and particularly the devil and his pompous allurements, 
were immersed under water, and received into Christ's kingdom by a 
solemn invocation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, according to the 
express command of our blessed Lord. After baptism they received 
the sign of the cross, were anointed, and by prayer and imposition 
of hands were solemnly commended to the mercy of God, and dedi- 
cated to his service, in consequence of which they received milk and 
honey, which concluded the ceremony. The reason of this particular 
ritual coincides with what we have said in general concerning the 
origin and multiplied ceremonies that crept from time to time into 
the Church." * In speaking of the same rite in the third cen- 
tury, he says : " There were twice a year stated times when baptism 
was administered to such as, after a long course of trial and prepar- 
ation, offered themselves as candidates for the profession of Chris- 
tianity. This ceremony was performed only in the presence of such 
as were already initiated into the Christian mysteries. The remission 
of sins was thought to be its immediate and happy fruit, while the 
bishop, by prayer and the imposition of hands, was supposed to con- 
fer those sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit that are necessary to the 
life of righteousness and virtue. We have already mentioned the 
principal rites that were used in the administration of baptism ; and 
we have only to add that none were admitted to this solemn ordi- 
nance until by the menacing and formidable shouts of the exorcist 
they had been delivered from the dominion of the prince of darkness 
and consecrated to the service of God. 

The driving out of this demon was now considered as an essen- 
tial preparation for baptism, after the administration of which the 
candidates returned home adorned with crowns and arrayed in white 
garments as sacred emblems, the former of their victory over sin and 
the world, and the latter of their inward purity and innocence." f 
In speaking of the same right in the fourth century, after the Chris- 
tian religion was established in the Empire, he says : " Baptismal 
fonts were now erected in the porch of each Church for the more 
commodious administration of that initiating sacrament. Baptism 
was administered during the vigils of Easter and Whitsuntide, with 
lighted tapers, by the bishop, and the presbyters commissioned by 
him for that purpose. In cases, however, of urgent necessity, and in 
such only, a dispensation was granted for performing that sacred 



* Mosheim's Ecclesiastical Hist. Cent. II. t Id. Cent IE. 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 33 

rite at other times than those now mentioned. In some places salt 
Was employed as a symbol of purity and wisdom, and was thrown 
with this view into the mouth of the person baptized : and a double 
unction was everywhere used in the celebration of this ordinance, 
one preceding its administration, and the other following it. The 
persons who were admitted into the Church by baptism were obliged, 
after the celebration of that holy ordinance, to go clothed in white 
garments during the space of seven days." * And in his history of 
the Church in the eleventh century we find a passage which implies 
or proves that baptism by immersion was the rule even at that late 
period. Here, in a controversy that took place between the Greek 
and Latin Churches, Cerularius, the patriarch of Constantinople, 
complains among other things, " that in the rite of baptism they (the 
Latins) confined themselves to one single immersion." f At what 
time the baptism by sprinkling was introduced does not appear, but 
it may have been practised to some extent all along in the ages after 
Constantine. Granting all that has here been said with respect to 
the manner of baptism in the primitive Church, we still remark that 
carnal ordinances, however performed, are of no account in compar- 
ison with regeneration, which baptism symbolizes, and which is the 
all-important thing Christianity has in view to achieve. Circum- 
cision is nothing ; uncircumcision is nothing ; but the keeping of the 
commandments of God is everything. 

The way in which the Lord's Supper was administered in the 
primitive Church was as follows : " The professors, according to their 
means, brought with them oblations of bread and wine and other 
things which they offered as gifts to the Lord ; and hence both the 
ministers of the Church and the poor derived their subsistence. Of 
the bread and wine presented in these offerings such a quantity was 
separated from the rest as was required in the administration of the 
Lord's Supper. This was consecrated by certain prayers pronounced 
by the bishop, to which the people assented by saying : Amen. The 
Holy Supper was distributed by the deacons, and this sacred rite 
was, in some churches, followed by the Agapae, or feasts of love, which 
in other churches preceded it." By this it plainly appears that the 
Christian priesthood was designed to be a substitute for the Jewish 
priesthood (the Christian bishop being the substitute for the Jewish 
high-priest, the presbyters for the priests, and the deacons for the 
Levites) ; and that the Lord's Supper represented the whole sacrifi- 
cial ritual of the Jews, consisting of popular oblations and priestly 
sacrifices. The primitive mode of celebrating the Lord's Supper, as 



* Moeheim's Ecclesiastical Hist. Cent IT. 

t Id. Cent. XI. The above quotation is explained by saying that it was, at least largely, 
the practice of the primitive Christians to immerse the person thrioe: 1st, into the name 01 the 
Father, 2d, into that of the Son, and M\, Into that oi the Holy Ghost. Bat. it la plum, that the 
one immersion into the three names is an abridgment of the three Immersions, and meana i ho 
same, while the three immersions may indicate more strongly the order In dignity of (he names, 
3 



34 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

given above, was much altered in course of time, and was also con 
siderably varied according to locality. 

We do not find that a community of goods was practised in the 
primitive Church, at least to any noticeable extent ; the converts who 
embraced the new religion were permitted to retain the possession 
of their property, to receive bequests and inheritances, and to increase 
their separate property by all the lawful means of trade and industry. 
Instead of an absolute sacrifice, a moderate portion was accepted by 
the clergy ; and in their weekly or monthly assemblies every believer, 
according to the measure of his wealth or the exigency of the occasion, 
presented his voluntary offering for the use of the common fund. 
Nothing, however inconsiderable, was refused, but it was diligently 
inculcated that in. the article of tithes the Mosaic law was still of 
divine obligation, and that since the Jews, under a less perfect dis- 
pensation, had been commanded to pay a tenth part of all they pos- 
sessed, it would become the disciples of Christ to distinguish them- 
selves by a superior degree of liberality, and to acquire some merit 
by resigning a superfluous treasure which must so soon be annihilated 
with the world itself. The bishop was the natural steward of the 
Church ; the public stock was entrusted to his care without account 
or control ; the presbyters were confined to their spiritual functions, 
and the more dependent order of the deacons was solely employed 
in the management and distribution of the ecclesiastical revenue. 

If the vehement declamations of Cyprian are to be credited, there 
were too many among his African dispensing brethren who, in the 
execution of their charge violated every precept, not only of evangeli- 
cal perfection, but even of moral virtue. By some of these unfaithful 
stewards, the riches of the Church were lavished in sensual pleasures, 
by others they were perverted to the purposes of private gain, of 
fraudulent purchases and rapacious usury. But it appears reasonable 
that as long as the contributions of the Christian people were free 
and unconstrained, the abuse of their confidence could not have been 
very frequent, and the general uses to which their donations were 
applied reflected honor on the religious society. A decent portion 
was reserved for the maintenance of the bishop and his clergy ; a 
sufficient sum was set apart for the expenses of the public worship, 
of which the agapce, or feasts of love, as they were called, constituted 
a pleasing part. The whole remainder was reserved for the poor. 

According to the discretion of the bishop, it was distributed to 
support widows and orphans, the lame, the sick, and the aged of 
the community ; to supply the wants of strangers and pilgrims, and 
to alleviate the misfortunes of prisoners and captives, more especially 
when their sufferings had been occasioned by their firm attachment 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 35 

to the cause of religion. A generous intercourse of charity united 
the most distant provinces and communities, and the smaller con- 
gregations were cheerfully assisted by the alms of the more wealthy. 
Such an institution, which paid less regard to the merit than to the 
distress of the object, very materially conduced to the spread of 
Christianity. The humane among the Pagans, while they derided 
the doctrines, acknowledged the benevolence of the new sect. The 
prospect of speedy succour and of future protection allured into its 
hospitable fold many unhappy persons whom the neglect of the 
world would have abandoned to want, sickness, and old age. There 
is also some reason to believe that numbers 01 infants who, according 
to the inhuman practice of these times, had been exposed by their 
parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated, and 
maintained by the pious charity of the Christians. 

Every society has the right of excluding from its numbers such 
of its members as reject or violate those regulations which have been 
established by general consent. In the exercise of this power, the 
primitive Christian Church directed its censures chiefly against 
scandalous sinners, and particularly those who were guilty of murder, 
fraud, or incontinence ; against the authors or the abettors of any 
heretical opinion which had been condemned by the judgment of the 
episcopal order : and against those unhappy persons who, whether 
from choice or compulsion, had practised after their baptism any act 
of idolatrous worship. The consequences of excommunication were 
of a temporal as well as a spiritual nature. The Christian against 
whom it was pronounced was deprived of any part in the common 
fund. The ties both of religion and private friendship were to him 
dissolved, and he found himself shunned and suspected by those 
whom he had esteemed, or by whom he had been beloved. The 
situation of these exiles was in itself very painful and melancholy, 
and their apprehensions must in some cases at least have far exceeded 
their sufferings ; for in the state of their knowledge then they could 
hardly erase from their minds the awful impression that these eccle- 
siastical governors, by whom they were condemned, possessed as the 
prerogative of their office the keys of hell and heaven. But the 
heretics who might be supported by the conscious rectitude of their 
intentions, and by the flattering hope that they alone had discovered 
the true way of salvation, endeavored to regain in their separate 
assemblies those comforts, temporal as well as spiritual, which they 
no longer enjoyed from the great societies. But almost all those 
who had reluctantly yielded to the allurements of vice and idolatry 
were sensible of their fallen condition, and anxiously desired to be 
restored to Christian communion. 



36 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

With respect to the treatment of these penitents two opinions, 
the one of justice, the other of mercy, divided the Primitive Church. 
The more rigid casuists refused them forever the meanest place in 
the community which they had disgraced or deserted ; and leaving 
them to the remorse of a guilty conscience indulged them only with 
a faint ray of hope that the repentance of their life might possibly 
be accepted by the Deity in lieu of eternal salvation. A milder 
sentiment was embraced in practice as well as in theory by the 
purest and most respectable of the Christian Churches. The door 
of reconciliation was seldom shut against the returning penitent, but 
a severe form of discipline was instituted, which, while it served as 
an expiation of his crime, might powerfully deter the spectators from 
imitating his example. Humbled by a public confession, emaciated 
by fasting, and clothed in sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the 
door of the assembly, imploring with sighs and tears the pardon of 
his offences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful. If the fault 
was of a very heinous character, whole years of penance were esteemed 
an inadequate satisfaction to the divine justice ; and it was always 
by slow and painful gradations that the sinner, the heretic, or the 
apostate was admitted into the bosom of the Church. A sentence of 
perpetual excommunication was, however, reserved for some crimes 
of an extraordinary magnitude, and particularly for the inexcusable 
relapse of those penitents who had already experienced and abused 
the mercy of their ecclesiastical superiors. The exercise of the 
Christian discipline was varied according to the circumstances or 
the number of the guilty. 

Of the number of Christian martyrs who suffered for their prin- 
ciples under the rule of the pagan Emperors it is difficult to make a 
true estimate, since we have to rely only on the statements, often 
exaggerated, of ecclesiastical historians of the fourth or fifth centu- 
ries, who appear to have ascribed to the magistrates of Rome the 
same degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal as actuated them- 
selves against the heretics or the polytheists of their own times. The 
celebrated number of ten persecutions has been determined by the 
ecclesiastical writers of the fifth century, who possessed a more dis- 
tinct view of the prosperous or adverse fortunes of the Church from 
the time of Nero to that of Diocletian. The ingenious parallels of the 
ten plagues of Egypt and of the ten horns of the Apocalyptic beast, 
appears to have first suggested this calculation to their minds ; and 
in their application of the fulfilment of prophecy to the events of 
history they carefully selected those reigns, which were in fact the 
most hostile to the Christian cause. The martyrs devoted to death 
by the Roman magistrates were selected from opposite extremes. 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 37 

They were either bishops and presbyters, the persons most distin- 
guished among the Christians for their rank and influence, and whose 
example might strike terror into the whole sect ; or else they were 
the meanest and most abject among them, especially those of the 
servile condition, whose lives were esteemed by the ancients of little 
value, and whose sufferings were wont to be viewed by them with 
too much indifference. The learned Origen, who was intimately 
acquainted with the history of the primitive Christians, declares in 
express terms, that the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable 
when compared with the whole number of Christians. This general 
assertion of Origen obtains an illustration in the particular testimony 
of Dionysius, who, in the great city of Alexandria, and under the 
reign of Decius, reckons but ten men and seven women who suffered 
for the profession of Christianity. The ecclesiastical writers before 
the fourth century content themselves with pouring forth a liberal 
effusion of loose and tragical invectives, without ascertaining or 
stating the precise number of Christians who were permitted to seal 
with their blood their belief of the Gospel. From the history of 
Eusebius, an ecclesiastical writer of the fourth century, it may be 
gathered that only nine bishops were punished with death in the 
violent persecution of Diocletian, his associates and successors. And 
in his particular enumeration of the martyrs of Palestine he appears 
to state that in that province no more than ninety-two Christians 
were entitled to the appellation of martyrs ; but from other state- 
ments it is inferred there may have been a greater number. From 
the latter particular statement an important, though perhaps not 
very probable conclusion has been formed. According to the dis- 
tribution of the Roman provinces, Palestine may be considered as 
about a sixteenth part of the Eastern Empire ; and since there were 
some Governors in some of the provinces who had kept their hands 
unstained with the blood of the Christians, it has been concluded 
that the country which gave birth to Christianity produced at least 
a sixteenth part of the martyrs of the Eastern Empire in that per- 
secution. The whole number, it is thought, might consequently 
amount to about fifteen hundred, a number which, if it be equally 
divided between the ten years of this persecution, will allow for 
each year about one hundred and fifty martyrs. Giving the same 
proportion to the provinces of Africa, Italy, and perhaps Spain, where 
at the end of two or three } r ears the rigor of the penal laws was 
either suspended or abolished, the number of Christians in the Roman 
Empire, on whom a capital punishment was inflicted by a judicial 
sentence during this persecution, will be about two thousand. Since 
doubtless the Christians were more numerous and their enemies more 



38 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

exasperated in the time of Diocletian, than they had ever been in 
any former persecution, this probable computation may teach us to 
estimate approximately the number of primitive Christians who may 
have sacrified their lives for the purpose of introducing Christianity 
into the world. 

The following circumstances tend to show that the treatment of 
Christians who were apprehended by the officers of the government, 
was not altogether so intolerable as it might be imagined to have 
been. I : The Christians who were condemned as a penalty to work 
in the mines were permitted, through the humanity or neglect of 
their keepers, to build chapels, and freely to exercise their religion 
in the midst of their dreary habitations. 3 : The bishops were 
obliged to check or censure the forward zeal of the Christians who 
voluntarily threw themselves into the hands of the magistrates. 
Some of those were persons oppressed by poverty and debts, who 
impetuously sought to terminate a miserable existence by a glorious 
death. Others were allured by a hope that a short confinement 
would expiate the sins of a whole life ; and others still were actuat- 
ed by the less honorable motive of deriving a plentiful subsistence, 
and perhaps a considerable profit, from the alms which the people 
through charity bestowed on the prisoners. After the Church had 
triumphed over all her enemies, the interest as well as vanity of the 
captives appears to have prompted them to magnify the merit of 
their respective sufferings. A convenient distance of time and space 
gave an ample scope to the progress of fiction ; and the frequent 
instances which had been alleged of holy martyrs whose wounds 
had been instantly healed, whose strength had been renewed, and 
whose lost members had been miraculously restored, were found 
extremely convenient for the purpose of removing every difficulty, 
and of silencing every objection. The most extravagant legends, 
as they tended to the honor of the Church, were applauded by the 
credulous multitude, countenanced by the clergy, and attested by 
the suspicious evidence of ecclesiastical history ; and thus a multi- 
tude of real or fictitious martyrs were objects of the worship of after 
ages. 

We shall conclude this sketch by a melancholy truth which ob- 
trudes itself on our mind, which has been seen and will be seen more 
fully from statements in this book ; that, even admitting without 
hesitation or question all that ecclesiastical history has recorded or 
devotion has feigned concerning the subject of martyrdoms, it must 
still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intes- 
tine dissensions, have inflicted immensely greater severities on each 
other than they had experienced from the persecutions of Pagans or in 



PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 39 

fidels. During the dark ages which followed the subversion of the Ro- 
man Empire in the west, the Popes of Rome extended their dominion 
over the laity as well as the clergy of the Latin Church. The fabric 
of superstition which they had built up, and which might long have 
defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd 
of daring men who, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, as- 
sumed the popular character of Reformers. The Church of Rome 
defended by violence the Empire which she had acquired by decep- 
tion and fraud ; a system of pretended peace and benevolence was 
soon characterized by wars, massacres, and the institution of the 
" Holy Inquisition." As the reformers were animated by the love of 
civil, as well as of religious freedom, the Catholic princes connected 
their own interest with that of the clergy, and enforced by fire and 
the sword the terrors of spiritual censures. In the Netherlands alone, 
more than one hundred thousand of the subjects of Charles V. are 
said to have suffered by the hand of the executioner, and this ex- 
traordinary number is attested by Grotius, a man of learning and ge- 
nius, who appears to have preserved his moderation amid the fury of 
contending sects, and who wrote the annals of his own age and coun- 
try at a time when the art of printing had facilitated the means of in- 
telligence and increased the danger of detection. If we may believe 
the authority of Grote we must allow that the number of Protes- 
tants who were executed in a single small province and in a single 
reign far exceed that of the primitive Christian martyrs in the space 
of three centuries and in the whole Roman empire. But even 
though the improbability of the statement should prevail in the 
mind over all the evidence given for it, yet many consider them- 
selves justified in inquiring what superior confidence should be 
placed in the imperfect and often doubtful records of early credulity? 
What degree of credit should be given to Eusebius or Lactantius, 
who under the protection of Constantine, recorded the persecutions 
inflicted on the primitive Christians by his now disregarded Pagan 
predecessors and vanquished rivals? But let all this be as it may 
it is certain that the genuine martyrs for the principle of Christ 
and for the true Christian faith are worthy of being kept in ever- 
lasting and grateful remembrance ! 



40 



CKEATO.i AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 



Rome's different kinds of rulers were in their order as 
follows, the last kind, the imperial, being that con 
tained in the eastern empire: 





Kings. 






Consuls. 






Dictators. 






Decemvirs : 






Consular Tribunes. 






Emperors. 




1. 


Octavius, i.e., Augustus (i.e. Gusta- 


21. Caracalla (and his brother Gaeta). 




vus), first emperor. 


22. Heliogabalus. 


2. 


Tiberius. 


23. Alexander Severus. 


3. 


Caligula. 


24. Maximinus. 


4. 


Claudius. 


25. Maximus and Balbinus. 


5. 


Nero. 


26. Gordiau. 


6. 


Galba. 


27. Philip, "the Arabian." 


7. 


Otho. 


28. Decius. 


8. 


Vitellius. 


29. Gallus. 


9. 


Vespasian. 


30. iEmilianus. 


10. 


Titus. 


31. Valerian. 


11. 


Domitian. 


32. Galienus. 


12. 


Nerva. 


33. Claudius. 


13. 


Trajan. 


34. Aurelian. 


14. 


Hadrian. 


35. Tacitus. 


15. 


Titus Antoninus Pius. 


36. Florianus. 


16. 


Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


37. Probus. 


17. 


Commodus. 


38. Cams. 


18. 


Pertinax. 


39. Diocletian (and his Caesars Maxi- 


19. 


Julius Didianus. 


mianus, Galerius and Constantius. 


20. 


Severus. 


40. Constantine, the son of Constantius. 



Here are forty successors in the empire in abort 370 years, that 
is, reckoning from the battle of Actium in 31 B. C, when Octavius 
attained to the supremacy over the last of the second Triumvirate, 
to the death of Constantine in 37 A. D., which leaves only a little 
over 9 years for the average reign. The cause of this shortness of 
average reign is found in the violence which prevailed in the empire 
during most of this time, and in the further fact that the imperium 
was not generally in effect hereditary, most of the emperors having 
been before generals of the armies. 



CHURCH AND STATE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 41 

An Explanation of Revelation XIII to verse 11, showing 

ITS FULFILMENT IN THE CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND 

State System, established at Constantinople by CON- 
stantine and his successors, with reference to the 
Parallel Prophecies of the Book of Daniel. 

We are now come to the point of time at which the established 
religion of the Roman Empire was changed from Paganism to Chris- 
tianity under Constantine and his successors ; and in order the better 
to elucidate this part of our subiect, we shall turn to the XHIth 
chapter of the book of Revelation, and illustrate its fulfilment his- 
torically in the two general systems of the Christian religion, or 
rather the two systems of which this religion formed a constituent 
part: first, that system of Church and State as established and prac- 
tised by Constantine and his successors in the Roman Empire : and 
second, that religeo-political system established by the Franco-Ger 
man kings and emperors in connection with the popes of Rome. The 
first ten verses relate to the former, the remaining part of the chap- 
ter to the latter system. Rev. ch. XIII., verse 1 : " And I stood 
upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, 
having seven heads and ten horns ; and upon his horns ten crowns (lit. 
diadems), and upon his heads names (not the name) of blasphemy/' 

Here the prophet in his vision conceives himself standing upon 
the sandy sea-shore, and looking abroad upon the waters he sees a 
wild beast Oypiav rising up out of the sea. This corresponds some- 
what with Daniel's vision of the four beasts coming up successively 
out of the sea, the last of which we understand in a sense to repre- 
sent the same with this : (See Dan. ch. VII.) This last beast has 
seven heads and ten horns, crowned : that in Daniel is not represent- 
ed as having seven heads, but as having ten horns which are not said 
to be crowned. That in Daniel symbolized the whole Roman 
Empire, considered as a power or government, Pagan as well as 
Christian, and comprising both the civil and religious branches 
of power. This represents the whole Christian Roman empire, also 
considered as a power or government, and likewise comprising both 
the civil and religious branches of power. The seven heads would 
here symbolise the whole Roman Empire as distinguished from any 
part of it united under one ruler ; also they would indicate the com- 
pleteness of human wisdom as distinguished from what individual 
men possess ; and, further, the number seven would indicate the sa- 
cred and secular elements, or in the ancient idea, the divine and hu- 
man combined. The character of this wisdom, whether beastly and 
serpentine, or belonging to the true man, and godlike, has to be de- 



42 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

termined from the other parts of the symbolic figure, of which the 
heads form a constituent part. The ten horns would represent the 
Empire to be made up of many different nations, which are severally 
governed by dependent rulers ; and the horns being crowned, or en- 
circled with diadems, would indicate these rulers, at least for the 
most part, to be crowned kings. The number ten would represent 
all the nations and their kings or rulers that would at any time be 
subject to the Roman Empire.* Having on his heads names of 
blasphemy indicates that the supreme ruler of the Empire would ar- 
rogate to himself the honors which belong only to the Deity ; and 
also that there would be blasphemous systems of worship established 
throughout the Empire. 

As Constantine was the first Roman Emperor that was called 
a Christian, and as under him and his immediate successors the 
change of the national religion from Pagan to Christian was brought 
about, we think it expedient to make our readers acquainted with 
the principal events in the life, and the principal points in the char- 
acter of that Emperor. This celebrated man was the son of Constan- 
tius, who was joint Emperor of the Romans with Galerius, Maximin, 
and Diocletian. The last-named was considered as supreme Emperor ; 
the three former were subordinate Emperors, that is, they governed 
their several divisions of the Empire in obedience to the great cen- 
tral authority vested in Diocletian. Thus Galerius was Emperor of the 
East and of Egypt ; Maximan of Italy and Africa ; and Constantius 
of Gaul and Britain. 

Helena, the mother of Constantine, history decides to have been 
the daughter of an innkeeper, and Constantine to have been born 
most probably at Naissus, in Dacia, which last was a province of the 
Empire extending along and stretching far inwards on both sides of 
the Danube. The city of Naissus was situated south of that river. 
The birth of Constantine is said to have occurred about the year 
274 A. D. When he was come to a mature age he did not follow 
his father Constantius to the West, but remained in the service of 
Diocletian, signalized his valor in the wars of Egypt and Persia, 
and gradually rose to the station of a tribune of the first order. The 
figure of Constantine was tall and majestic ; he was dexterous in all 
his exercises ; courageous in war, affable in peace ; in his whole con- 
duct the active spirit of youth was tempered with habitual prudence ; 



* That this is so you may perhaps judge if you are informed that out of five different lists giv- 
en in Newton's Dissertations on Prophesy, each giving the particular nations which the writer 
supposed to make up the ten, no two of them agree. But a notable error which all Protestant 
interpreters that we are acquainted with have committed was in confounding the symbolic 
beast of Revelation XTO. with that of Revelation XVTI. and that of Daniel VH. There needs 
a very perceptible distinction to be made. 



CHURCH AND STATE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 43 

and while his mind was engrossed with ambition he appeared cold 
and insensible to the allurements of pleasure. Through the entreat- 
ies of his father he was at length induced to visit him at his seat of 
government in the West, and performing his journey from Asia Mi- 
nor, he reached the port of Boulogne, at the moment when his father 
was preparing to embark for Britain. Having accomplished the Brit- 
ish expedition and an easy victory over the barbarians of Caledonia, 
Constantius ended his life in the imperial palace in the city of York. 
His death was immediately succeeded by the elevation of Constan- 
tine, who was declared Emperor by the voice of the soldiers, on 
July 25th, A. D., 306. The soldiers were effectually solicited in be- 
half of the son of their deceased Emperor. They were asked wheth- 
er they would hesitate for a moment between placing Constantine at 
their head, and the ignominy of calmly awaiting the arrival of some 
obscure stranger, on whom it might please Galerius, Emperor of the 
East, (Diocletian having ere now retired from office) to bestow the 
armies and provinces beyond the Alps. He artfully contrived not 
to show himself to the soldiers until they were prepared 'to salute 
him with the titles of Emperor and Augustus. The decent resistance 
which he chose to affect to the willingness of the soldiers was intend- 
ed to justify his usurpation ; nor did he yield to the acclamations of 
the army till he had prepared an epistle, which he immediately dis- 
patched to Galerius. Constantine informs him of the melancholy 
event of his father's death, modestly asserts his natural right to the 
succession, and respectfully laments that the affectionate violence of 
his troops does not permit him to solicit the Imperial purple in the 
regular and constitutional manner. Without either condemning or 
ratifying the choice of the British army, Galerius accepted the son 
of his deceased colleague as the sovereign of the provinces beyond 
the Alps ; but he gave him only the title of Cassar, and the fourth 
rank among the Roman princes, while he conferred the vacant place 
of Augustus upon his favorite Severus. At the time of his assump- 
tion of Imperial power at York, Constantine had reached the age of 
thirty-two years, and in the space of eighteen years after, he, by a 
succession of victories, vanquished the power and persons of three 
rival Emperors, and in the year 324 A. D. was recognized sole 
Emperor of the Romans. The foundation of Constantinople, and 
the establishment of the Christian religion, were the immediate and 
memorable consequences of this revolution. 

The accounts transmitted to us of the date and probable cause of 
the conversion of Constantine are various. Lactantius, an ecclesias- 
tic of his court, appears impatient to proclaim to the world the glo- 
rious example of the sovereign of Gaul, who, in the first moment!? of 



44 CREATOR AKD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

his reign, acknowledged the true and only God. Eusebius, another 
ecclesiastic of the same court, has ascribed the conversion of Con- 
stantine to a miraculous sign which he saw displayed in the heavens 
whilst he meditated and prepared the expedition which resulted in 
the conquest of Maxentius and of Italy. A contemporary writer 
affirmed, with the most perfect confidence, that in the night which 
preceded the last battle against Maxentius, Constantine was admon- 
ished in a dream to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with the celes- 
tial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ : that 
he executed the commands of heaven, and that his obedience and 
valor were rewarded by the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge. 
Nine years after his conquest of Rome, Nazarius describes an army 
of divine warriors, who seemed to fall from the sky ; he marks their 
beauty, their spirit, their gigantic forms, the stream of light which 
shone from their celestial armor, and their declaration that they were 
sent, that they flew to the assistance of the great Constantine. Eu- 
sebius says that in one of the marches of Constantine " he is report- 
ed to have seen with his own eyes the luminous trophy of the cross 
placed above the meridian sun, and inscribed with the following 
words : By This Conquer. This amazing object in the sky aston- 
ished the whole army as well as the Emperor himself, who was yet 
undetermined in the choice of a religion ; but his astonishment was 
converted into faith by the vision of the ensuing night. Christ ap- 
peared before his eyes, and displaying the same celestial sign of the 
cross, he directed Constantine to frame a similar standard, and to 
march with an assurance of victory against Maxentius and all his 
enemies." 

Such are some of the causes which are ascribed by historians for 
the conversion of Constantine to the Christian religion ; and any 
candid mind may determine for itself whether that spirit corresponds 
to the spirit of Christ, which incites a man to the slaughter of his 
fellow-men ; or enquire why Christ did not come to him with a 
sword in his hand, and tell him to conquer by that. We must all 
allow that if God's spirit represented to him a cross, and told him to 
conquer by that, and he afterwards conquered by the sword and the 
horrors of war, he must have misunderstood or misapplied the lesson 
the vision was designed to teach him. The cross, in vision or other- 
wise, indicates the self-denying and benevolent spirit of the Gospel. 
But Constantine made a real sign of the visionary cross, and set it 
up as a standard to fight under; and in this he manifested the very 
spirit of the Catholic Christianity he established, by instituting an 
outward sign or representation of Christ, under which he could act 
in direct opposition to the nature and spirit of the Lamb of God. 



CHURCH AND STATE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 45 

From this time onward the cross was highly esteemed by the Ro- 
mans ; it was carried at the head of their armies : it was inscribed 
upon the shields of the soldiers : it was used as a preservative from 
every species of temporal and spiritual evil, by all classes of the 
citizens ; and it became the object of the superstitious veneration of 
all. 

Constantine came to the throne of the Empire through seas of 
blood ; and like some other great conquerors, he appears to have 
used religion as a footstool in his ascent to it. His public and private 
character do not justify the belief that he was a sincere convert to 
Christianity. " It must indeed be confessed," says Mosheim,* " that 
the life and actions of this prince were not such as the Christian 
religion demands from those who profess to believe its sublime doc- 
trines. It is also certain that from his conversion to the last period 
of his life he continued in the state of a catachumen, and was not re- 
ceived by baptism into the number of the faithful until a few days 
before his death, when that sacred rite was administered to him at 
Nicomedia, by Eusebius, bishop of that place. — For it was the custom 
of many in this century to put off their baptism till the last hour, 
that thus immediately after receiving, by this rite, the remission of 
their sins, they might ascend pure and spotless to the mansions of life 
and immortality." Thus the whole life of those Catholic Christians 
might be spent in a manner, however diabolical and depraved ; and 
their sins, however numerous and aggravated, might be washed away 
immediately before their death by the purifying virtues of the waters 
of baptism, so that they could ascend pure and spotless to the man- 
sions of life and immortality. What doctrine could be more hypo- 
critical and blasphemous than this ? The Christian writers of all 
ages since his time, both Catholic and Protestant, are wont to- speak 
in rather exalted terms of the character of Constantine, the cause of 
which is, that he supported and established the Christian religion. 
But however this may be, the history of his time proves him to be, 
not only a crafty and cunning man, but a cruel and relentless tyrant. 
The former part of his life was exercised in bloody wars ; the latter 
was spent in arrogance and effeminate pride, and in the display of a 
suspicious, cruel, and merciless disposition. The wanton murder of 
his son Crispus in the year after he had convened the council of Nice, 
leaves an indelible stain upon his memory. The cause of the death 
of Crispus was nothing more than jealousy and suspicion on his part, 
on account of the esteemed merits and popularity of his son. The 
testimony of history is that he first bribed informers to testify against 

* Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History; Century TV. 



46 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the prince, and the result was Crispus suffered a cruel and ignomini- 
ous death. After several battles fought between Constantine and the 
Emperor Licinius, who was his brother-in-law, to decide which of them 
should be greatest, the latter was reduced to the necessity of throwing 
himself at the victor's feet and imploring his clemency, which, how- 
ever, he did not long enjoy, for he was strangled by the order of Con- 
stantine in the year 325 A. D., the same year in which was held the 
Council of Nice. Much has been said about David murdering Uriah, 
that he might obtain his wife ; but David only had Uriah placed in 
front of the battle, yet it is called murder ; then what shall be said of 
the conduct of Constantine, or this great man-child of Christian writers 
(see Rev. XII.) towards his former colleague, his kinsman, and now 
humble suppliant, Licinius, in ordering him to be strangled to get 
him out of his way ? Lardner observes that " many ancient writers 
charge Constantine with a breach of faith in this matter." But these 
are not the only crimes of the kind alleged against Constantine : he 
had already despatched his father-in-law, Maximian, with whose son, 
Maxentius, he was at war at the time of his pretended conversion. 
After this he put to death Bassianus, to whom he had married his 
sister Anastasia. The Csesar Licinius, the younger, a youth of amiable 
manners, was involved in the ruin of Crispus ; and the stern jealousy 
of Constantine was unmoved by the prayers and tears of his own sister 
pleading for her son, whose rank was his only crime, and whose death 
she did not long survive. The story of these unhappy princes, the 
nature and evidence of their guilt, the forms of their trials, and the 
circumstances of their death were buried in mysterious obscurity, and 
the courtly bishop Eusebius, who has celebrated in an elaborate work 
the virtues and piety of his hero, observes a prudent silence on the 
subject of these tragic events. Next we have to mention Fausta, the 
wife of Constantine, and daughter of Maximian, who was put to death 
in a short time after the two princes. It is asserted by Zosimus that 
he sent and had her suffocated in a bath, which for that purpose had 
been heated to an extraordinary degree ; although it may appear that 
the remembrance of a conjugal union of twenty years, and the honor of 
their common offspring, the destined heirs to the throne, might have 
availed to soften the obdurate heart of Constantine, and persuaded 
him to suffer his wife, however culpable she might appear to him, to 
expiate her offences in a solitary prison. The deaths of her son and 
nephew, With the execution of a great many respectable, and perhaps 
innocent friends who were involved in their fall, may have been suffi- 
cient to justify the discontent of the Roman people, and to explain the 
satirical verses affixed to the palace gate, comparing the splendid and 
bloody reign of Nero and of Constantine. Under such circum- 



CHURCH AND STATE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 47 

stances it might argue some degree of candor in Constantine to de- 
cline being numbered among the faithful till he was past committing 
such monstrous crimes ; but to assure him that his blood-guiltiness 
could in the end be washed away with a little water, was one of the 
most impious delusions of the anti-Christian priesthood which he 
established. This, however, will become more apparent as we pro- 
ceed. The Emperor, although he usurped the sceptre by treason, 
forthwith assumed to himself the character of vicegerent of the Deity. 
To the Deity alone he was accountable for the use or abuse of his 
power ; and his subjects were indissolubly bound by their oath of 
fidelity to a tyrant who had violated or might violate every law of 
nature or of society. 

The gratitude of the Christian Church exalted the virtues and 
excused the failings of a patron who acted generously toward it, 
seated Christianity on the throne, and established it in the temples 
of the Roman world. The mysteries of the Christian faith and 
worship were concealed from the eyes of the laity with an affected 
secresy ; but the severe rules of discipline which the bishops had 
instituted were relaxed by their prudence in favor of an imperial 
proselyte, whom it was so important to allure by every gentle con- 
descension into the pale of the Church : and Constantine was per- 
mitted, at least by their tacit consent, to enjoy most of the privileges 
before he had contracted any of the obligations of a Christian. In- 
stead of retiring from the congregation when the voice of the priest 
dismissed the vulgar multitude, he prayed with the faithful, disputed 
with the bishops, expatiated on the most sublime, the most subtile 
and intricate subjects of theology, celebrated with sacred rites the 
vigil of Easter, and publicly declared himself not only a partaker, 
but in an important sense an hierophant of the Christian mysteries. 
In his last visit to Rome the Emperor disclaimed and insulted the 
superstition of his ancestors by refusing to lead the military proces- 
sion of the equestrian order, and to offer the public vows to Jupiter 
of the capitol. 

Many years before his baptism and death he had declared to the 
world that neither his person nor his image should ever more be seen 
within the walls of an idolatrous temple ; while he had distributed 
through the provinces a variety of medals and pictures which rep- 
resented the Emperor in an humble and suppliant posture of Chris- 
tian devotion. The Greek Church, which celebrates the festival of 
this imperial saint, seldom mentions the name of Constantine with- 
out adding the title of Equal to the Apostles. 

The irresistable power of the Roman Emperors was from this 
time displayed in the important and dangerous change of the national 



48 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTTIKOLOGIES, ETC. 

religions. The terrors of a military force silenced the faint and un- 
supported murmurs of the Polytheists. The exact balance of the 
two religions did not long continue, and the piercing eye of ambition 
and avarice soon discovered that the profession of Christianity might 
contribute to the interests of the present as well as of a future life. 
The hopes of wealth and honors, the example of an Emperor, his 
exhortations, his irresistible smiles or his terrible grimaces, diffused 
conviction among the venal and obsequious crowd which usually fill 
the departments of a palace. The cities which signalized a zeal for 
Christianity by a voluntary destruction of their temples were dis- 
tinguished by municipal privileges and rewarded with popular dona- 
tions ; and Constantinople, the new capital of the East, gloried in 
the singular advantage, that it was never profaned with the worship 
of idols. As the lower classes of society are governed mainly by 
imitation, the conversion of those who possessed any eminence of 
birth or power, or of wealth, was soon followed by dependent multi- 
tudes. The salvation of the common people was easily effected, if 
it be true that in one year twelve thousand men were baptized at 
Rome, besides a proportionate number of women and children ; and 
that a white garment, with twenty pieces of gold, had been promised 
by the Emperor to every convert. 

It had been established before by a fundamental principle of the 
Koman constitution that every order of citizens, the sacred as the 
civil, was alike subject to the laws ; and that the care of religion was 
the right and duty of the civil magistrate. Constantine did not 
persuade himself that by his conversion he had forfeited any part 
of the imperial prerogatives, or that he was incompetent to give laws 
to a religion which he had protected and embraced. The Roman 
Emperors still continued to exercise a supreme jurisdiction over the 
ecclesiastical order, and the sixteenth book of the Theodosian code 
represents, under a variety of titles, the authority which they assum- 
ed and exercised as the supreme heads of the Catholic Church. 

After the defeat of Licinius, his last rival, the victorious Emper- 
or proceeded to lay the foundations of a city upon the shores of the 
Thracian Bosphorus, destined to reign in future time the mistress of 
the East, and to survive the Empire and religion of Constantine. As 
he urged, himself, the progress of the work with the greatest zeal 
and energy, the walls, the porticos, and the principal edifices of this 
magnificent city were completed in the space of about ten years ; 
upon which the founder celebrated with games and festivals the 
foundation of the new seat of Empire. As often as, during the 
reign of his successors, the birthday of the city returned, the statue 
of Constantine, of gilt wood, framed by his order, and bearing in its 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 49 

right hand a small image of the genius of the place, was erected on 
a triumphal car. The guards, carrying lighted tapers, and clothed 
in their richest apparel, accompanied the solemn procession as it 
moved through the hippodrome. When it came opposite to the throne 
of the reigning Emperor he rose from his seat, and with grateful 
reverence adored the memory of his predecessor. At the festival of 
the dedication an edict, engraved on a column of marble, bestowed 
the title of Second or New Rome upon the new city. But the name 
of Constantinople has prevailed over that honorable epithet, and 
after the revolution of over fifteen centuries still perpetuates the 
fame of its author. Rome had some time before begun to be neglect- 
ed by the Emperors : Diocletian, who may be called the immediate 
predecessor of Constantine, as sole Emperor, having taken up his 
residence for some time at Sirmium, and then at Nicomedia. 

The foundation of a new capital was connected with the estab- 
lishment not only of a new form of religion, but with that of a new 
form of civil and military administration. The manly pride of the 
ancient Romans, content with substantial power, had left to the 
vanity of the eastern nations the forms and ceremonies of ostenta- 
tious greatness. But when they lost even the semblance of those 
virtues which were derived from their republican freedom, the sim- 
plicity of their manners was insensibly corrupted by the stately 
affectation of the courts of Asia. The distinct view of the complicat- 
ed system of policy introduced by Diocletian, improved by Constan- 
tine, and completed by his immediate successors within a period of 
one hundred and thirty years, not only amuses the fancy with the 
singular picture of a great Empire, but tends to illustrate the secret 
and internal causes of its rapid decay.* The distinction of personal 
merit and influence so conspicuous in a republic, so feeble and ob- 
scure under a monarchy, were abolished by the despotism of the 
Emperors, who substituted in their stead a severe subordination of 
rank and office, from the titled slave who was seated on the steps of 
the throne, to the meanest instruments of arbitrary power. This 
multitude of abject dependents was interested in the support of the 
actual government from the dread of a revolution which might at 
once confound .their hopes and intercept the reward of their services. 
In this divine hierarchy, (for such it is frequently styled), every rank 
was marked with the most scrupulous exactness, and its dignity was 
displayed in a variety of trifling and solemn ceremonies, which it 
was a study to learn and a sacrilege to neglect. The purity of the 
Latin Language was debased by adopting in the intercourse of pride 



* See Theodosian Code, and Notitia Dignitatum Imperii. 



50 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and flattery, a profusion of epithets which Cicero would scarcely have 
understood, and which Augustus would have rejected with contempt. 
The principal officers of the Empire were saluted, even by the 
Emperor himself, with the high sounding and plausible titles of Your 
Sincerity, Your Gravity, Your Excellency, Your Eminence, Your 
Sublime and Wonderful Magnitude, Your Illustrious and Magnifi- 
cent Highness. The codicils, or patents of their office were curious- 
ly emblazoned with such emblems as were adapted to explain its 
nature and high dignity ; the image or portrait of the reigning Em- 
perors ; a triumphal car ; the book of mandates placed on a table, 
covered with a rich carpet, and illuminated by four tapers ; the alle- 
gorical figures of the provinces which they governed ; or the appella- 
tions and standards of the troops they commanded. Some of these 
official ensigns were exhibited in their halls of audience ; others pre- 
ceded their pompous march whenever they appeared in public; and 
every circumstance of their demeanour, their dress, their ornaments, 
and their train was calculated to inspire a deep reverence for the 
representatives of supreme majesty. To an observer, this new im- 
perial system of the Roman government might have presented the 
appearance of a splendid and magnificent theatre, in which was dis- 
played one object more prominent and conspicuous than the rest, — 
the Emperor, — which inspired the beholders with awe and terror, 
and in which the players of every character and degree repeated the 
language and imitated the passions of their original model. 

All the magistrates of sufficient importance to find a place in the 
general state of the Empire,were accurately divided into three classes. 
1. The Illustrious. 2. The Respectable. 3. The Honorable. In the 
times of Roman simplicity the last-mentioned epithet was used vague- 
ly only as an expression of deference,till it became at length the pecu- 
liar and appropriated title of all who were members of the senate, and 
consequently of all who, from that venerable body, were selected to 
govern the provinces. The vanity of those who from their rank or 
office might claim a superior distinction above the rest of the sena- 
torial order, was afterwards indulged with the new appellation of 
Respectable ; but the title of Illustrious was always reserved to some 
eminent personages who were obeyed and reverenced by the two- 
subordinate classes. It was communicated only : 1. To the consuls and 
patricians; 2. To the praetorian prsefects, with the prefects of Rome 
and Constantinople. 3. To the masters-general of cavalry and in- 
fantry ; and, 4. To the seven ministers of the palace who exercised 
their trusty functions about the sacred person of the Emperor. 
Among those illustrious magistrates who were esteemed co-ordinate 
with each other, the seniority gave place to the union of dignities. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 51 

By the expedient of honorary codicils, the Emperors who were fond 
of multiplying their favors might sometimes gratify the vanity, 
though not the ambition, of their courtiers. In the times of the 
Roman republic, the consuls were the first magistrates of the state, 
and derived their power from the choice of the people. But from 
the reign of Diocletian, even these vestiges of popular liberty were 
abolished, and the consuls, whose office was now become merely 
nominal, were appointed by the will of the Emperor ; and their 
office was finally abolished in about the year 541, by the Emperor 
Justinian. Such is a concise view of the hierarchy of the state of 
the Christian Roman Empire, as established by Constantine. 

In the fourth century, the age which we are now considering, 
there were violent controversies among the Christian sects, especial- 
ly upon the subject of the Trinity. Three different hypotheses were 
formed concerning the nature of the divine Trinity. 1 : According 
to the first hypothesis, which was maintained by Arius and his fol- 
lowers, the Word, or Logos, was a dependent and spontaneous pro- 
duction, created from nothing by the will of the Father. The Son, 
by whom all things were made, had been begotten before all worlds 
and the longest period of time which man can conceive could be com- 
pared only as a fleeting moment to the extent of his duration ; yet this 
duration was not infinite, and there had been a time which pre- 
ceded the generation of the Logos. On this onh r begotten Son the Al- 
mighty Father had bestowed his ample Spirit, and impressed the efful- 
gence of his glory. Visible image of invisible perfection, he beheld., at 
an immeasurable distance beneath his feet, the thrones of the bright- 
est archangels ; yet he shone only with a reflected light, and like the 
sons of the Roman Emperors, who were invested with the titles of 
Csesar, or Augustus, he governed the universe in the obedience to 
the will of his Father and Monarch. 2 : In the second hypothesis, 
which was supported by the Tritheists, the word, or Logos, possessed 
all the inherent, incommunicable perfections of the supreme God. 
Three distinct and infinite minds or substances, three co-equal and 
co-eternal beings composed the Divine essence ; and it would have 
implied contradiction that any of them should not have existed, or 
that they should ever cease to exist. The advocates of this system 
which seemed to establish three independent Deities, attempted to 
preserve the unity of the First Cause, so conspicuous in the design 
and order of the world by the perpetual concord of their administra- 
tion and the essential agreement of their will. They discovered a 
faint resemblance of this unity of action in the societies of men, and 
even of the inferior animals. The, causes which disturb their har- 
mony proceed only from the imperfection and inequality of their 



52 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

faculties ; but the omnipotence which is guided by infinite wisdom 
and goodness cannot fail of choosing the same means for the accom- 
plishment of the same ends. 3 : The third hypothesis, which was 
maintained by the followers of Sabellius, maintained that three beings, 
who by the self-derived necessity of their existence, possess all the 
divine attributes in the most perfect degree ; who are eternal in dur- 
ation, infinite in space and intimately present to each other, and to 
the whole universe, irresistibly force themselves upon the mind, as 
one and the same being, who, in the economy of grace, as well as in 
that of nature, may manifest himself under different forms, and be 
considered under different aspects. By this hypothesis, a real sub- 
stantial Trinity is refined into a Trinity of names and abstract mod- 
ifications, which subsist only in the mind which conceives them. The 
Logos is no longer a person, but an attribute ; and it is only in a 
figurative sense that the epithet of Son can be applied to the eternal 
reason or speech, which was with God from the beginning, and by 
which, not by whom, all things were made. The incarnation of the 
Logos they reduced to a mere inspiration of the divine wisdom, 
which filled the soul and directed all the actions of the man Christ 
Jesus. Thus, after revolving round the theological circle, we find 
that the Sabellian ends where the Nazarene and the Ebionite had 
begun. 

In the Council of Nice, held in the year 325, A. D., at which 
Council Constantine was present, the Tritheists, or Trinitarians, 
gained the day. The consubstantiality of the Father and the Son 
was established by this Council, and has been unanimously received 
as the fundamental article of the Christian faith by the Greek, the 
Latin, the Oriental, and the Reformed Churches. The triumphant 
party here and henceforward are styled the Orthodox, in contradis- 
tinction to heretics, or Unitarians. 

The orthodox Nicene Fathers, in decreeing the Son to be of the 
same substance with the Father, considered the word substance as 
synonymous with the word nature ; and they illustrated their mean- 
ing by affirming that three men, as they belong to the same common 
species, are consubstantial, (Greek, homoousion) to each other. This 
pure and distinct equality was tempered on the one hand by the in- 
ternal connection and spirtual penetration which indissolubly unites 
the divine persons ; and, on the other, by the pre-eminence of the 
Father, which was acknowledged, so far as it was compatible with 
the independence of the son. The Orthodox, after their victory in 
the Council of Nice, have always treated with greater severity the 
heretics who degraded, than those who annihilated, the person of the 
Son. In the Council of Constantinople, convened under the aus- 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 53 

pices of the Emperor Theodosius, in the year 381, A. D., or about 
fifty years after the death of 'Constantine, it was decreed that the 
Holy Spirit was consubstantial and equal with the Father and the 
Son. And thus, and at this time, was the system of the Trinity com- 
pleted, and the doctrine of it established by law throughout the 
Roman Empire. And Theodosius was the first Roman Emperor who 
was baptized in the faith of the Trinity. 

On the death of Constantine, which happened at Nicomedia, 
whither he had gone to enjoy the benefit of the fresh air, in the year 
337, A. D., his body was transported back to the City of Constanti- 
nople, and there adorned with the vain symbols of royalty, the purple 
and diadem, was deposited on a golden bed in one of the apartments 
of the palace which, for that purpose, had been splendidly furnished 
and illuminated, and there kept to await the arrival of some of the 
sons of Constantine, who all happened to be absent from the city, in 
different parts of the Empire, in the command of armies, at that 
time. The forms of the court were strictly maintained. Everyday, 
at the appointed hours, the principal officers of the state, the army 
and the palace, approaching the person of their deceased sovereign 
with bended knees and a composed countenance, offered their re- 
spectful homage as seriously as if he had been alive before them. 
This theatrical representation was for some time continued ; nor 
could flatterers neglect the opportunity of remarking that Constan- 
tine alone, by the peculiar indulgence of heaven, had reigned after 
his death. But the same ministers and generals who bowed in such 
reverential awe before the inanimate corpse of their deceased Emperor, 
were engaged in a secret conspiracy to exclude his two nephews, 
Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, from the share which he had assigned 
them in the succession of the Empire. Their fate, as well as the 
funeral of Constantine, was deferred till the arrival of Constantius, 
the second of the sons of Constantine, who, from his comparative 
nearness to the imperial city at the time of the decease, was the first 
of the sons to arrive. 

As soon as he had taken possession of the palace, his first care 
was to remove the apprehensions of his kinsmen, by a solemn oath, 
which he pledged for their security. His next business was to find 
some specious pretence which might release his conscience from the 
obligation of his promise. The arts of fraud were made to subserve 
the designs of cruelty, and a manifest forgery was put into the hands 
of Constantius, in which the Emperor is made to express his opinion 
that he had been poisoned by his brothers ; and conjures his sons to 
revenge his death and consult their own safety by the punishment 
of the guilty. In the production and delivery of this forgery it is 



54 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

said, on the authority of one respectable historian, that Eusebius, 
bishop of Nicomedia, was the chief instrument. Whatever reason 
these princes alleged in defence of their life and honor, and against so 
incredible an accusation, they were silenced by the furious clamors of 
the soldiers, who declared themselves at once their enemies, their 
judges, and their executioners. The spirit and the forms of legal 
proceedings were violated in a promiscuous slaughter, which involved 
the two surviving brothers of Constantine, seven of his nephews, of 
whom Dalmatius and Hannibalianus were accounted the most illustri- 
ous, the patrician Optatus, who had married the late Emperor's sister, 
and the Prsefect Ablavius, whose power and riches had inspired him 
with some hopes of obtaining the throne. We may add that Constan- 
tius himself had espoused the daughter of his uncle Julius, and that he 
had given his sister in marriage to his cousin Hannibalianus. Of so 
numerous a family of the imperial race Gallus and Julian, the sons 
of Julius Constantius, the brother of the late Emperor, alone remained 
from the hands of the assassins. This massacre was succeeded by a 
fresh division of the Roman world, which was ratified in a personal 
interview between the three brothers. Constantine, the eldest, 
obtained with a certain pre-eminence, the possession of the capital. 
Thrace and the provinces of the East were allotted for the govern- 
ment of Constantius ; and Constans was acknowledged as the 
sovereign of Italy, Africa, and the West. After this partition three 
years had scarcely elapsed before a war broke out between Constan- 
tine and Constans, in which the former was slain, and latter succeeded 
to his dominions, A. D., 340. The fate of Constans, the conqueror, 
was delayed about ten years longer, when he was overcome and 
slain by an aspirant to the throne, the usurper Magnentius, A. D., 
350. Constantius, the now surviving Emperor, waged war against 
the usurper Magnentius, and conquered him ; and he died in the 
year 361, as he was marching against his cousin Julian. Such were 
Constantine and his sons, whom the orthodox Christian world cele- 
brated as the great builders and supporters of their establishment. 
And the sons of Constantine, though guilty of the most horrid and 
barbarous crimes, are yet honored and applauded under the beautiful 
name of a Christian profession, following the example of their father, 
as Mosheim expresses it " in continuing to abrogate and efface the 
ancient superstitions of the Romans, and other idolatrous nations, 
and to accelerate the progress of the Christian religion throughout 
the Empire." * But observe what follows : " This flourishing pro- 
gress of the Christian religion was greatly interrupted, and the 



* Mosheim' s Ecclesiastical Hist. Cent I. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 55 

Church reduced to the brink of destruction, when Julian, the son of 
Julius Constantius, was placed at the head of affairs." * What now 
is the matter ? Although this prince had been educated in the bosom 
of Christianity, " yet he apostatized from that divine religion,'' says 
Mosheim. And what, pray, was the cause of his apostatizing ? The 
answer is : " It was partly owing to his aversion to the Constantine 
family, who had imbrued their hands in the blood of his father, 
brother, and kinsmen." It appears, therefore, it was not from the 
peaceful religion of the Gospel that he apostatized, but from that of 
bloody murderers. There is quite a difference between these two 
religions, that established by Constantine and his successors, and 
that of the Gospel of Christ. " Julian," adds Mosheim, " affected in 
general to appear moderate in religious matters, unwilling to trouble 
any on account of their faith, or to seem averse to any sect or party." 
And because he allowed equal liberty to all, — or, as Robinson ex- 
presses it : " The just and gentle Julian, because he headed neither 
party, and put off the purple unstained with the blood of heretics, — 
both sides agree to execrate as a diabolical apostate." 

And strange as it may seem, this mild and equitable government of 
Julian is by some of the most eminent orthodox writers and divines 
included in the flood which the dragon poured out of his mouth to 
destroy the woman, i. e., the church, and her son Constantine, the 
first Christian Emperor, whom they are wont to represent as this man- 
^hild. (See representation in Rev. ch. XII.) But we have examin- 
ed this man-child that they have exalted, not only to God and to his 
throne, but above all that is called God ; and we have found in Con- 
..tantine and his immediate successors, and in the system, civil and 
religious, which they introduced, the true representation in its incipi- 
ency of the beast which the prophet saw rising up out of the sea, having 
seven heads and ten horns. And here is the place for us to speak 
with respect to the symbolic sea up out of which this symbolic beast 
came. 1 : The countries of the Roman Empire which were the theatre 
of the actions of the Roman armies are situated for the most part 
round the Mediterranean Sea, or the Great Sea of Daniel VII, out 
of which the latter prophet also saw his four beasts ascending. This 
may help to show where this power would arise, or, in other words, 
the seat and locality of it. 2 : Constantine erected his new capital 
upon the shores of the Thracian Bosphorus, and between the Grecian 
Archipelago and the Black Sea; so that this doubtless helps to show 
the principal seat and locality of this power. 3 : The sea, properly 
speaking, out of which this power arose would symbolise an unsettled 

* Julian was the cousin and successor of Constantius, the last of the sons of Constantine. 



56 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

state of the Empire, wars, commotions, and intestine discords of 
State and Church. We have seen that the life of the first Christian 
Emperor was eminently one of war and commotion until he had 
vanquished all his opponents and made himself sole master of the 
Empire. We have seen what an exceedingly unsettled state of af- 
fairs the change of the whole national religion must have necessi- 
tated ; which change was begun by Con stan tine, but was not wholly 
accomplished until the age of Theodosius, over fifty years after the 
death of the former. We have seen that Constantine gave not only 
a new religion but a new and magnificent capital or seat of govern- 
ment, and a new form of civil policy and administration to the state. 
Also, the time at which this power arose, in the beginning of the 
fourth century, leaves no doubt whatever but that we make a proper 
application of the prophecy ; this fact will appear more clear before 
we have finished our explication of this chapter. The vision in Rev. 
Ch. XIII, 1-11, refers to the whole Roman Empire, east as well as 
west, and west as well as east, beginning with Constantine and with 
the establishing of the Christian religion, that is, the government 
whose capital was Constantinople. Verse 2 of our prophecy is: 
" And the wild beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet 
were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion ; 
and the dragon gave him his power and his seat (lit., throne) and 
great authority." This wild beast, it is seen, comprises in itself the 
characteristics of the four beasts, of Daniel VII, the- first of which 
was a lion, symbolizing the Babylonian Empire; the second like a 
bear, the Medo-Persian, the third like a leopard, the eastern Grecian 
Empire of Alexander and his successors ; and the fourth, the beast 
with the ten horns, which overcame all the rest and stamped then: 
under its feet, symbolising the Roman Empire, which overcame them 
all, and comprises here in itself all their characteristics. Also, the 
vision of Nebuchadnezzar's image, Dan. II., verses 31-46, is a 
parallel prophecy to that of the four beasts in Dan. VII., and bears 
the same relation to this in Rev. XIII. as the latter does. The sym- 
bol is easily understood from its characteristics; the leopard is furious 
and quick to spring upon his prey ; the bear's feet are singularly ef- 
fective for retaining that prey and tearing it to pieces ; and the lion's 
mouth indicates boldness, arrogance, and power of speech, as well as 
physical force. The dragon giving him his power and his seat, and 
great authority, indicates that one system, or. form of government, 
would yield to another, which would be established and exercised in 
its stead. Here it means that the old Pagan Roman system of gov- 
ernment, civil and religious, would yield to the Christian system of 
government, civil and religious : and that the seat, literally the throne 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 57 

wherever that happened to be, as at old Rome, Milan, Sirmium, Ni- 
comedia, which were all seats of the Roman Emperors at different 
times before the period which we are now considering : (but here the 
seat of Empire is Constantinople :) should be given up with all the 
authority and power that appertained to it. This power was yielded 
up by all opposing Pagan powers to Constantine, who inaugurated a 
new system of government, which was completed gradually by his 
successors. 

As we have to view this system in its twofold aspect of civil and 
religious, it is in place to remark here upon some of the most eminent 
orthodox Fathers who were present at, and succeeded the first 
Catholic, or universal Council, that of Nice. These men were con- 
tinually commenting and improving upon the canons, decrees, and 
doctrines of the Nicene Council. A conspicuous member of this 
first Council was the deacon Athanasius, afterwards a canonized 
saint, who is celebrated as the composer of the creed which begins 
thus : " Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that 
he hold the Catholic faith," that is, as established in the Councils 
of Nice and Constantinople, the faith of the Roman Empire, of the 
Greek and Roman Churches ; in short the Catholic faith : " which 
faith," it goes on to say, " except every one do keep, whole and un- 
defiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly."* This creed 
which is yet professed, even in some Protestant Churches, we must 
certainly confess is an insult to reason and a dishonor to the Most 
High. What a strange amount of assumption and arrogance in any 
man or combination of men to condemn to eternal misery all who do 
not choose to believe in the dogmas which such saw fit to impose 
by the allurements of the secular arm ! This faith, as the Athan- 
sian creed goes on to explain, is the doctrine of the Trinity, or rather 
Tritheism, which, as it explains it, is beyond the power of man to un- 
derstand. Athanasius,however,was a zealous and ardent supporter of 
his doctrine of the Trinity : he was, in short,the acknowledged leader 
in his time of the Trinitarian party. Soon. after the Council of Nice, 
ne became bishop of Alexandria, from which position he was banished 
three several times by the power of his opponents, the Arians, and 
restored after an interval, each time by the power of his own party. 
In this age the Trinitarians and Arians, i. e., Unitarians, appear 
to have been pretty equally divided in numbers, (the Arians, perhaps, 
being considerably more numerous, but the Trinitarians having on 
their side the ruling power,) and to have been both imbued to an 

* This creed is now generally admitted not to have been composed by him whose name it 
bears, but is commonly attributed to Vigilius Tapsensis, who lived at the close of the fifth 
century. 



58 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

equal degree with the spirit of fanaticism and persecution. The 
Arians when in power persecuted the Trinitarians, and the latter the 
former in like manner : and the whole of these proceedings of bitter- 
ness and persecution simply exemplified the outworking of the prin- 
ciple of evil that is in man, which we have had occasion to remark 
upon before, and as will be seen more fully as we proceed. 

Ephraim, the Syrian, acquired an immortal name by the multitude 
of his writings in which he combatted the sectaries. Hilary, bishop 
of Poictiers, is immortalized by his twelve books concerning the 
Trinity, which he wrote in orjposition to the Arians. The following 
is the strain in which he speaks of the heresies of his time : " It is a 
thing equally deplorable and dangerous that there are as many creeds 
as opinions among men, as many doctrines as inclinations, and as 
many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us; because 
we make creeds arbitrarily, and explain them as arbitrarily. The 
Homoousion (the consubstantiality of the Father and Son) is rejected 
and received and explained away by successive synods. The par- 
tial or total resemblance of the Father and the Son is a subject of 
dispute for these unhappy times. Every year, nay every moon, we 
make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries. We repent of 
what we have done, we defend those who repent, we anathematize 
those whom we defended. We condemn either the doctrine of 
others in ourselves, or our own in that of others ; and reciprocally 
tearing one another to pieces we have been the cause of each other's 
ruin." This teaches us that human beings are radically in every 
age much the same : in the fourth century as well as now, and now 
as well as then ; there are about as many different opinions on re- 
ligion as there are human beings. And if we now-a-days have less 
wrangling and contention and bloodshed on account of religion, it is 
owing to religion becoming more pure, being made more comprehen- 
sible to the human mind ; and to a higher state of general education 
and of civilization existing among the people. But let men be in the pos- 
session of ever so little knowledge, they still can cultivate the good 
principle and develop the godly character in themselves ; and knowing 
ever so much they should not for a moment neglect to cultivate and 
develop these. Rufinus, presbyter of Aquileia, was famous for his com- 
mentaries on several passages of the Scriptures, and his bitter contest 
with St. Jerome. "He would," says Mosheim, * "have obtained a 
very honorable place among the Latin writers of this century had it 
not been his misfortune to have the powerful and foul-mouthed 
Jerome for his adversary." But the glory of these and of all other 

* Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History; Century IV 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 59 

ecclesiastical writers and saints of this age was eclipsed by that of 
St. Augustin. Mosheim says " The fame of Augustin, bishop of 
Hippo, in Africa, filled the whole Christian world." He gained much 
honor in his controversy with Pelagius, suppressing the Pelagian 
heresy almost in its beginning, and establishing the Catholic doc- 
trines of the Imputation of Original Sin, Election, and Reprobation ; 
and of salvation by mere grace without any foresight of faith, or re- 
gard to good works, which have darkened Christendom even to the 
present day. The African bishops, with Augustin at their head, main- 
tained the Catholic faith even against the bishop of Rome, who 
esteemed Pelagius sound in the faith ; and by their exhortations, 
letters and writings won over the Roman Pontiff to their side. Pela- 
gius and his doctrines were condemned with the utmost severity at 
Rome, and also in the famous council at Ephesus, A. D., 431. " In 
short," says Mosheim, " the Gauls, Britons, and Africans by their 
councils, and the Emperors by their edicts and penal laws demolish- 
ed this sect in its infancy." " While Genseric," says Robinson, " was 
defending the Arian faith at the head of eighty thousand men, Augus- 
tin, who had no command over the sword, was inflaming his hearers 
with violent passions by urging them to hate one another for their 
speculations." * In one of his sermons the following is worthy of notice. 
The discourse is about the strait gate, and this, according to Catho- 
lic faith, cannot be good works, or obedience to the Gospel law, but the 
wounded side of Jesus. " By this strait gate of the side of Christ," 
says he, " the converted thief entered, the penitent Jew, every con- 
verted Pagan : but the wicked Arian heretic turns his back upon 
him and goes out. He is one of those of whom St. John says ; 
They went out from us, — O you Arian heretic ! " " Several Catholic 
historians observe," says Robinson, " for the glory of God, for the 
honor of his providence, and for the benefit of the Church, that the 
very day on which Pelagius was born in Britain to shed darkness 
over the Empire, St. Monico lay in with St. Augustin in. Africa, to 
dispel the darkness, and throw light and sunshine and mid-day 
splendor over the minds of mankind." " Just so," say they, 
"when heretics appeared in the Western world, did not God by his 
Spirit excite Pope Innocent to erect the most holy office of the Inqui- 
sition. From this bitter and bloody fanatic of Africa proceeded two 
hundred and thirty-two pamphlets. He understood the ten com- 
mandments in a spiritual sense ; and Thou shalt not kill, signified, 
thou shalt not kill an orthodox believer. The command did not pro- 
tect the life of a heretic. St. Augustin, that renowned Catholic ora- 



• Robinson's Ecclesiastical Researches. 



60 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

cle, had once himself been a professed Manichsean, and had he re- 
mained so he might have remained a stranger to the diabolical work 
of persecuting others for their religious opinions, and perhaps have 
been exempt from the just charge of his having insulted the reason 
and abused the rights of mankind. But when he returned from his 
errors, as Mosheim chooses to express it, and became a true orthodox 
Catholic, then, indeed, the whole force of his much admired genius 
and flowing eloquence was employed in stirring up persecution 
against the heretics ; and he and other such saintly men endeavored 
to inflame the passions of those in power, to extirpate the root of this 
"horrible disease," which so much troubled their Catholic peace. 
Through the influence of Augustin and other orthodox saints severe 
laws were enacted by the Emperors against the Manichaeans, who 
are said in the fourth century to have increased far above the other 
denominations of heretics in numbers and influence. Their assem- 
blies were prohibited, heavy penalties were imposed upon their 
teachers, they were branded with infamy, and deprived of all rights 
and privileges, as citizens. The society of the Donatists also suffered 
immense cruelties ; numbers ot them were banished, and many of 
them persecuted with brutal barbarity until they came to enjoy 
peace during the short reign of the Pagan Emperor Julian, who per- 
mitted the exiles to return to their homes, and restored them and 
all other persecuted sects to the enjoyment of their former liberty. 
But no sooner did the self-styled orthodox attain the exercise of 
power again after the death of Julian than the scene changed ; and 
none among them appeared more fit to perform the cruel work of 
making the blood of heretics to flow than St. Augustin. " He," 
says Mosheim, "instigated against them, not only the Province of 
Africa, but also the whole Christian world and the Imperial court." 
The Mother of Abominations, of which we shall have occasion to 
speak more afterwards, could not at that age of apostacy have'con- 
ceived and brought forth a more genuine offspring to help to fill up 
the cup of her inexpressible wickedness, than that " learned and in- 
genious prelate " St. Augustin, a divine oracle to her adulterous seed, 
but a most contemptible tool in the eyes of the virtuous.* The 
Donatists had expressly remonstrated against appeals to the civil 
power in cases of religion. " The implacable Austin," says Robin- 
son, " had spent almost half a century in banishing, butchering and 
driving all dissenters into corners ; and there he stood crowing to 
hail the return of day." f But the Donatists recovered for a time 
their former liberty and tranquillity, by the protection they received 



* Vide " Christ's Second Appearing." t Robinson's Ecclesiastical Researches. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 61 

from the Vandals who conquered Africa ; but as the Vandal king- 
dom was brought to a close in 534, A. D., hence orthodoxy and per- 
secution once more overwhelmed that ill-fated country, Africa. 
" Councils, canons, edicts, and all imaginable instruments of oppres- 
sion came rolling in like a tide." The constitution of the Catholic 
Church from the period of the Nicene Council, inspired the priest- 
hood with a growing ambition to rid the Empire of everyone that would 
not conform to their ideas. Heretics stood principally in their way ; 
therefore the greatest champion in detecting and accusing heretics, 
however contrary to the Gospel the means he employed, stood high- 
est on the list of Catholic heroes and canonized saints. It was easy 
to see that there could be no room either for truth or charity where 
the continued strife was who should be greatest. And the revenues 
which flowed from the government to those ghostly hierarchs prompt- 
ed them to still higher degrees of ambition by which the common 
people were trampled under foot, or at best considered as necessary 
tools for promoting their opulence and grandeur, and supporting 
them in luxury and idleness. To show that this was the real genius 
of this imperious hierarchy the following particulars suffice : "Ma 
ny of the privileges," says Mosheim, "which had formerly belonged 
to the presbyters and people were (after Constantine) usurped by 
che bishops. Their first step was an entire exclusion of the people 
; i'om all part in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs." * " In 
episcopal order the bishop of Rome was the first in rank, and was 
distinguished b}^ a sort of pre-eminence over all other prelates. Pre- 
judices, arising from a great variety of causes, contributed to estab- 
lish his superiority ; but it was chiefly owing to certain circumstan- 
ces of grandeur and opulence by which mortals for the most part 
form their ideas of pre-eminence and dignity." " The bishop of 
Rome surpassed all his brethren' in the magnificence and splendour 
of the Church over which he presided ; in the riches of his revenues 
and possessions, in the number and variety of his ministers ; in his 
credit with the people, and in his sumptuous and splendid manner of 
living. These dazzling marks of human power had such a mighty 
influence upon,, the minds of the multitude, that the see of Rome 
became a most seducing object of sacerdotal ambition. Hence it 
happened that when a new Pontiff was to be elected by the suffrages 
of the people, the city of Rome was generally agitated with dis 
sensions, tumults, and cabals, whose consequences were often de- 
plorable and fatal. The intrigues and disturbances which prevailed 
in the city in the year 366, when, upon the death of Liberius, anoth- 
er Pontiff was to be chosen in his place, are some proof of what we 

• Mosheim's Ecc^iastk-nl History: Century IV. 



62 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OJR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

have now advanced. Upon this occasion one party elected Damasus 
to that high dignity, while the opposite party chose Ursicinus, a 
deacon of the vacant church, to succeed Liberius. This double 
election gave rise to a dangerous schism, and to a sort of civil war 
within the city of Rome, which was carried on with the utmost bar- 
barity and fury, and produced cruel massacres and desolations. This 
inhuman contest ended in the victory of Damasus." Such was the 
degree of lawless power to which these degenerate plants of the vine 
of Sodom had already attained, and which evidently proceeded in a 
great degree from the anti-Christian authority which they derived 
from the emperor, their head, and from the secular power. This ap- 
pears from what follows from Mosheim : " The additions made by the 
Emperors and others to the wealth, honors and advantages of the 
clergy were followed by a proportionable augmentation of vices and 
luxury, particularly among those of that sacred order who lived in 
great and opulent cities ; and that many such additions were made 
to that order after the time of Constantine is a matter that admits 
of no dispute." Hence there was a principal cause of their ambition, 
a sordid thirst for temporal glory ; and hence the historian observes ; 
" The bishops on the one hand contended with each other in the most 
scandalous manner concerning the extent of their respective juris- 
dictions; while on the other hand they trampled upon the rights of 
the people, violated the privileges of the inferior ministers, and imi- 
tated in their conduct and in their manner of living, the arrogance, 
voluptuousness, and luxury of magistrates and princes. This perni- 
cious example was soon followed by the several ecclesiastical orders. 
The bishop by degrees divested the presbyters of their ancient priv- 
ileges and their primitive authority, tha*t they might have no impor- 
tunate protesters to control their ambition or oppose their proceed- 
ings ; and principally that they might engross to themselves or dis- 
tribute as they thought proper the possessions and revenues of the 
Church. Hence it came to pass that at the end of this (fourth) cen- 
tury there remained no more than a mere shadow of the ancient gov- 
ernment of the Church." Admitting that there did remain a mere 
shadow, there must be an essential difference between the shadow 
and the substance. But it appears evident there did not remain 
even a distinct resemblance of the primitive Christian Church, if we 
compare the arrogance, voluptuousness, luxury, and cruelty of the 
clergy, and the barbarity, fury and inhuman contests and cabals of 
their subjects with what the Gospel represents Jesus to have taught 
his disciples ; "But Jesus called them and saith unto them : Ye 
know that they who are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise 
lordship over them ; and their great ones exercise authority upon 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE BOM AN EMPIRE. 63 

them. But so shall it not be among you ; but whosoever shall be 
great among you shall be your deacon, and whosoever will be 
chiefest shall be servant of all," Mark X. 42-45. How diametrically 
opposite appear the whole proceedings of this Catholic hierarchy, 
even in the fourth century : The bishop lording it over the presby- 
ters; the presbyters over inferior officers, and the lower class of 
hierarchy setting themselves up as great ones over the common peo- 
ple ; and priests and people ; and the civil power tyrannizing with 
relentless cruelty over reputed heretics, whose lives of virtue, and 
perhaps of ignorance, exposed them alone as common prey to this 
ravenous and beastly legal power of State and Church. This is the 
Church which had been denominated the blessed Mother of saints 
and of great saints, and even of Saint Constantine the Great, under 
whose reign President Edwards could affirm that that great building 
which had been erecting since the fall rose to so great a height ! 
This is that great hierarchy, and these the effect of that Catholic 
Gospel for which he could affirm that no other cause could be de- 
vised but the power of God.* Doubtless that proverb is true : 
There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof 
are the ways of death. 

After his conquest of Magnentius, Constantius, the last surviving 
son of Constantine I, rinding himself unequal to the cares of the 
empire, conferred the rank of Cresar upon his cousin Julhfn, who 
until this time had been pursuing his studies among the Grecian 
philosophers, and appointed him to the government of the western 
provinces. The Sarmatkns, whom he found in arms, he defeated 
and compelled to sue for peace. This Julian, called " the apos- 
tate," because of his inclining to polytheism, whose abilities for 
military life had been before despised on account of his devotion to 
study, now proved himself an able general in the conduct of a 
war against the Franks and Alemanni. But the fame of his mili- 
tary exploits, spreading through the empire awakened the jealousy 
of Constantius ; who now issued an order commanding a large de- 
tachment of the veterans, who were under Julian to march to the 
assistance of the eastern legions. But these troops, whether or 
not with the connivance of Julian, refused obedience to Constantius 
and at once proclaimed their present general emperor. The prof- 
erred crown Julian with somVartful hesitation accepted, and with 
secrecy and dispatch directed his march to the attack of Constan- 
tinople. Relinquishing the Persian wars Constantius advanced to 
meet him; but for some reason they do not appear to have come 
to any engagement in battle before Constantius died in 361. 

* History of Rodemptioir. 



64 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Julian, on coming to the sole possession of the impermm, did not 
prohibit the Christian worship nor revive the persecution charac- 
teristic of the ages before Constantine ; but he removed Christians 
from offices of trust and from the care of youth and inconvenienced 
them in various ways. 

Having settled the affairs of the west Julian led an army into 
Asia. He wintered his army at Antioch, and, on his way to- 
ward Persia, ravaged Syria. He is said with the assistance of the 
Jews to have attempted to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem in 
order to disprove the prophecy of Christ; but as often as the 
foundation was laid it was destroyed. Says a pagan historian: 
" Horrible balls of fire, breaking out from the foundation, with fre- 
quent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place inaccessible to the 
workmen. The victorious element, continuing in this manner, 
seemed obstinately bent on driving them to a distance, and the 
hopeless attempt was abandoned." This, then, is what the account 
informs us Julian and his abettors, the Jews, got for their pains in 
essaying to disprove Christ's prophecy! Jerusalem, however, had 
not only strong foundations but high and massive walls in the ages 
of the crusades. It required two day's exercise of the most in- 
genious and valorous efforts, with movabie towers and all the im- 
pleuunts of assault, known to the warriors of the eleventh century, 
to gain the battlements of Jerusalem and plant thereon the stand- 
ard of the cross in the year 1099. The walls, therefore, must have 
been built after the days of Julian, doubtless at some time when 
the earth was not energizing there its igneous forces. 

As the Romans passed the Tigris on this expedition they won a 
victory over the Persians, but here their success ended. At the 
suggestion of a treacherous Persian, who, in the character of a de- 
serter, entered his camp, Julian was induced to burn his fleet. As 
the Romans then advanced they found the country deserted of its 
inhabitants, who, by the order of the Persian king, had gone and 
taken with them their cattle leaving little to supply the wants of 
the Roman army. Julian now sought to retrace his steps ; but a 
numerous army of Persian cavalry, hovering around, harassed his 
retreat. The emperor having received a mortal wound, spent his 
dying moments in philosophical discourse ; and on his death 
the army elected in his place one named Jovian, who died 
before reaching Constantinople? Jovian being mentioned in con- 
nection with Julian makes the historical language somewhat poeti- 
cal; and some have thought the historical romance here to 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 65 

mean that Jovian is Julian as he converses Socratically in the hour 
of death? 

The Emperor had not been many days dead when Sapor, the 
Persian king, sent to the disheartened army proposals of peace, 
which, though advantageous, were accepted. The provinces east of 
the Tigris, which Diocletian had obtained of Narses, were given back 
to Persia; and the strongly fortified city of Nisibis, which had so 
often, while in possession of the Romans, resisted the Persian 
arms, together with some of the strongest fortresses in Mesopota- 
mia, were surrendered, when the army was allowed to pursue its 
homeward way undisturbed. 

Valentin, who had been chief of staff or captain of the guard to 
Julian, now took charge of the army and conducted it on its home- 
ward journey. This man never assumed the imperial insignia worn 
by Diocletian or Constantine; but acted in the capacity of " pro- 
tector " of the empire so long as he was allowed to live. But every 
day henceforth the decline of the empire became more apparent. 
The civil wars of the sons of Constantine had destroyed vast num- 
bers of the veterans and left the frontiers exposed to the depreda- 
tions of the barbarians. For a short time the valor of Julian had 
availed to stop their incursions; but his unsuccessful Persian war 
had greatly reduced the military force of the empire. The Goths, 
who had repeatedly before invaded the empire, now again ap- 
peared upon the frontier, being pressed in this direction by the 
Hunns, a vast and terrible race from the north of Asia, now pursu- 
ing a course of conquest towards the southwest. They had subdued 
the nations of the Alani, which inhabited the regions between the 
Volga and the Tanais, and had advanced to the kingdom of the 
Goths as early as 375 A. D. The first appearance of the Himns 
upon the Gothic frontier was in the declining years of the renowned 
chief Hermanric, whose dominion, it is said, extended from the 
Baltic to the Danube and Lake Maeotis ; and who had united under 
his sway the two great portions of the Gothic race, the western or 
Visigoths, and the eastern or Ostrogoths: the former having been 
for some time governed by the house of Balti, the latter by that 
of Amali. Consequent upon the death of Hermanric and the lack 
of unity of action which ensued between the Ostrogoths and the 
Visigoths, the former branch soon submitted to the Hunns ; and 
the latter, a million in number, who could bring into the Held 
200,000 fighting men, crossed the Danube and by the consent of 
the guardian, Valentin, settled in Thrace, on certain conditions; but 



66 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the most important of which, the relinquishment of their arms, 
they afterwards evaded. They were also granted permission to en- 
gage in traffic ; but the avarice of the Roman ministers not only 
rendered the permission useless but destructive to them. The prop- 
erty they had did not allow them sufficient for a subsistence and 
they were obliged, to some extent, to sell their children to obtain 
bread. Fritigern, a principal chief of theirs, having been treach- 
erously dealt with by the governor of Marcianopolis, summoned his 
people to arms. They thereupon overran and desolated Maesia 
and then threatened Constantinople. 

The foregoing is the way this first introduction of the Goths 
takes place as recorded in the Roman histories ; but if we could see a 
Gothic version of the matter we would doubtless discover that they 
crossed the Danube of their own accord, at their own risk, and 
without previous understanding had with the guardian of the em- 
pire; that finding themselves there they spread themselves over the 
country and claimed that they wanted to live and traffic as peacea- 
ble citizens of the Roman government: and that after a while they 
became discontented with the amount of taxes required of them and 
revolted. But while Valentin is now collecting his forces from the 
west and east to oppose the Visigoths the latter form an alliance 
with a body of Ostrogoths, who had also procured a settlement on 
the southern side of the Danube and with some scattered hordes of 
the Alani and Hunns. This united host encountered the Roman 
army under the guardian Valentin, on the plains of Adrianople, and 
defeated them. In this battle two-thirds of the imperial army 
were destroyed; the remainder fled; Valentin, mortally wounded, 
was by his attendants conveyed to a building, which, being fired 
by the enemy, he perished in the flames. The Goths now ravaged 
the country to the suburbs of Constantinople. 

Theodosius, a native of Spain, whose father had held a high com- 
mand in the army in the days of Valentin, and who appears to 
have been himself the Prsefect of the Praetorians, now assumed 
the government, and for a time pursued a watchful and prudent 
policy. From Thessalonica, which for the time, he made his head- 
quarters, he kept his eye intent upon the movements of the Goths 
and took every judicious opportunity of diminishing their numbers 
or of gaining over their leaders to his side. 

Disunion among the Goths having ensued upon the death of 
Fritigern, the different tribes pursued different courses, each what 
it thought was for its own interest ; and in four years after the 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 67 

death of Valentin the policy of Theodosius procured an advan- 
tageous peace. On this occasion Theodosius invited their aged chief 
Athanaric to visit the capital and partake of the hospitalities of the 
palace. At the grandeur and magnificence of the objects which 
met his eye the aged chieftain is said to have expressed his aston- 
ishment. " Truly," he exclaimed, " the emperor of the Romans is 
a god upon earth ; and the presumptuous man who dares to lift his 
hand against him is guilty of his own blood." Athanaric having 
sickened and died Theodosius treated his remains with the most 
imposing honors; and the Goths, ingratitude for this, entered the 
Roman legions, declaring that while Theodosius lived they would 
acknowledge no other chief. 

But while Theodosius was thus reducing things to a state of 
order in the east a new insurrection had arisen in the west. Max- 
imus, a native of Britain, had entered Gaul, at the head of his 
legions, and had there been hailed as emperor. Theodosius there- 
upon going in search of him at the head of a numerous and well 
disciplined army, came up with the new emperor, on the banks of 
the Save in Pannonia, defeated his forces and executed him as a 
usurper. 

Thus did Theodosius attain the sole sovereignty of the empire, 
now for the last time united under his sway, in the year 388. In 
his reign the ecclesiastical power manifested itself as already rising 
superior to the civil. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, was then an 
ecclesiastic of great influence. In a moment of passion Theodo- 
sius had given that cruel order, which forever indelibly stains his 
memory, of putting to the sword the inhabitants of Thessalonica, 
for an alleged crime of which they who suffered were not guilty. 
For this, Ambrose boldly reproached him, and exacted of him a 
penance to be publicly performed. In this, the emperor, in a 
mournful and suppliant posture, is said, with sighs and tears to 
have confessed and deplored his crime in the presence of the con- 
gregation. 

As to the Division of the Empire into the East and West. 

Before his death, which is entered for the year 3U5, Theodosius 
is said to have divided the empire between his two young sons, giv- 
ing to the elder, Arcadius, the eastern division, with Constanti- 
nople as his capital; and to the younger, Honor ius, the western, 
with his capital in Rome. It is also said that this division proving 



68 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

permanent makes it an epoch in history. But the truth appears to 
be that there was no such division made of the empire at 
this time, the division, such as it was, being effected in some 
years afterwards and by foreign force. The Gothic nations, 
who had come into the empire before and during the reign of 
Theodosius, were like the Saxons, who came into Britain in the 
middle of the fifth century, prudent enough to take account of their 
own strength, and observant enough to perceive the weakness of 
the empire. The legions, too, of the regular army of the empire 
became now well filled with this kind of soldiers, and were not un- 
frequently commanded by men of that race: while the indolent 
and now become effeminate citizens of the old stock of the empire 
were slow to enlist in the military service of their country. 

The Ostrogoths, under Alaric, in the year 402, spread devasta- 
tion through Thrace, Macedonia and Attica. They then proceeded 
towards Italy ; but were met by a Roman army commanded by 
Stilicho, at Pollentia, and, after a severe battle were compelled to 
retreat. Following them up, Stilicho again defeated Alaric at 
Verona, and procured from him a temporary peace. 

In the year 406 an invasion of the Pagan Goths took place, which 
was found to be more difficult to contend with than that of the 
somewhat christianized Ostrogoths, who were possessed at least of 
the rudiments of civilization. These Pagan Goths are said to have 
consisted of a confederacy of the German nations, the Vandals, 
Suevi, Burgundians, and part of the Alani, to the number of 
200,000 armed men. Led by their king, Radagasius, they issued 
from the shores of the Baltic; and, having showed themselves upon 
the upper Danube, passed into Italy and invested Florence. But 
Stilicho, having collected a very numerous army, surrounded them 
as they lay in their camp, unapprehensive of danger, and reducing 
them to great distress compelled a good number of them to capitu- 
late ! Radagasius having lost his life, his army took up their re- 
treat and leaving Italy, they proceeded to devastate Gaul, from the 
Rhine to the Pyrenees. Gibbon says: " This may be considered 
the fall of the Roman empire beyond the Alps." 

In about two years later Alaric, advancing with a large army of 
his Ostrogoths on Rome, that ancient city was compelled to pur- 
chase with money his departure ; but the conditions of the payment 
not being fulfilled he appeared again before the gates in the year 
410 and compelled the Senate to receive, as the emperor of his 
choice, Attalus, the prefect of the city. The capital was yet 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 69 

spared, but the Ostrogoths overran Italy. In the same year or that 
following, however, Alaric returned, degraded Attalus from his 
position as emperor, and sacked "the eternal city," leaving it as a 
prey to the soldiery for six successive days. 

Passing forth triumphantly Alaric bent his course toward the 
south of Italy, intending to pass over to Africa and conquer the 
Roman provinces there; but on his way he died. 

The grave of this celebrated foreign conqueror of Rome, the first 
of such kind now for the space of 795 years, or since Brenduf, chief 
of the Gauls, burned that city in 385 B. C, was made in the bed of 
a stream whose waters, diverted from their channel for that pur- 
pose, on resuming their wonted course, forever concealed it. 

Adolphus, the brother-in-law and successor of Alaric, had at first 
in mind to make Rome the seat of a new Gothic empire; but finally 
concluded, it is said, after the Ostrogoths had enjoyed an undis- 
puted sway for four years, to leave Italy to be governed by her 
own regulations. And now having concluded a peace with the 
eastern empire and married Placidia, who is entered in the history 
as a daughter of Theodosius, he retired from Italy into Gaul and 
thence into Spain, where he founded the kingdom of the Visigoths 
in about the year 412 A. D. 

Adolphus, in a few years after, having fallen in war, his wife 
Placidia is said to have returned to Italy and to have become the 
wife of Constantius, a distinguished general. He is said to have 
been declared emperor, but that being assassinated soon after his son 
Valentinian, a boy of six years of age, was declared in his stead, 
his mother, Placidia, acting as regent in his minority. Such is in 
general how the narrative appears in the history, which in this 
connection may represent correctly the sequence of the events. 

The armies of the west were, at the time we are now considering, 
or in the time of the minority of the son of Adolphus, commanded 
by iEtius and Boniface, between whom there existed a bitter en- 
mity. By the misrepresentations of iEtius, Placidia is said to 
have so distrusted Boniface as to have recalled him from his com- 
mand in Africa. Boniface, who has been called "the last of the 
Romans," was thoroughly roused by the suspicion of his integrity, 
and, revolting from the home government, invited to his aid a deso- 
lating scourge. This was Genseric, king of the Vandals, who had 
established his nation in Spain. He having transported hk army 
over the strait of Gibraltar drew to his camp the wandering Moors 



70 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

and then began the conquest of Africa. Before Boniface had 
learned his mistake and returned to his allegiance, the provinces 
from Tangiers to Tripoli had become a prey to the destructive fury 
of the Vandals. Boniface engaged them in battle, but was defeated 
and compelled to retreat. By reason of a treaty formed with the 
western empire the progress of the Vandals was for a time re- 
tarded ; but in eight years Genseric had conquered Carthage and 
established a kingdom. 

Atila, the king of the Hunns, was now the most powerful monarch 
in Europe. He claimed descent from the ancient Hunns, who had 
contended with the monarchs of China, and 700,000 warriors 
marched under his banners. He had conquered the various unciv- 
ilized nations of northern Europe. His devastations extended as 
far as Persia, and Theodosius II., now emperor of the East, was 
compelled to pay him tribute. With Genseric he made an alliance; 
and, preventing the eastern empire from giving assistance to the 
son of Adolphus he facilitated the progress of the Vandalic 
king. 

Intending to invade Italy Atila endeavored to ally himself with 
Theodoric, the king of the Visigoths of Gaul; but in this he did 
not succeed: and when iEtius, the general of Valentinian had ar- 
rived in Gaul with an army for its defense Theodoric united his 
forces with his. There also came to the assistance of ^Etius, on 
this occasion, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Sarmatians or 
Alani, the Franks and some other small tribes. This combined 
army encountered the formidable host of Atila at Chalons and after 
a most sanguinary conflict compelled him to retreat. On the side 
of iEtius in this battle the Visigoths were the strongest of any 
force, and in it Theodoric, their king, was slain. His son animated 
his people to avenge his death; but Atila, notwithstanding, secured 
a retreat. This battle was fought in 451 A. D., and the loss on 
both sides in the engagement is put down at 162,000 men. 

The forces of Atila, were, however, by no means exhausted, 
and in the ensuing spring he passed the Alps and invaded Italy, 
besieging and taking Aquileia, Milan and Pavia. Valentinian com- 
mitted the defense of the nation to iEtius, who, unaided by forces 
from without, found himself unable to withstand or retard the 
progress of the enemy. On this occasion, therefore, in 452 A. D., 
an embassy accompanied by Leo, bishop of Rome, in his sacred 
robes, was dispatched to the camp of the Hunns. Atila listened at- 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 71 

tentively to their humble petition, and agreed to a treaty which 
purchased the temporary safety of Rome at an immense price. 

The death of Atila, which is said to have occurred soon after his 
withdrawal at this time had the effect of disuniting the Hunns, and 
for the time of relieving Rome from fears of its once formidable 
enemy. Yet the destruction of the present order of things in 
Italy was only delayed but not entirely removed. There was no 
sufficient internal organized force to resist a powerful foreign foe. 
Placidia was now dead and her son, Valentinian, no longer under 
her government, gave way to petty jealousy, and brutally mur- 
dered his faithful servant, iEtius ; thus as he was told by a Ro- 
man " cutting off his right hand with his left," He is said soon 
after to have fallen by the hand of Petronius Maximus, "an in- 
jured husband," who became emperor in his stead, and compelled 
his widow Eudoxia, to marry himself. But Eudoxia, in order to 
be revenged on her new lord is said to have secretly invited in 
Genseric; and the latter, having, since he had come into possession 
of Carthage, no lack of sea craft, soon responded to her call. He 
gladly accepted the invitation of Eudoxia to invade Italy, and hav- 
ing landed his troops at the mouth of the Tiber, in the year 455, he 
advanced to the now defenseless city. On learning of the approach 
of the Vandals Maximus is said to have tried to escape, but to 
have been slain in the streets. Pope Leo's entreaties again saved 
the city from conflagration ; but fourteen days and nights it pre- 
sented terrible scenes of pillage and rapine. Public and private 
wealth ; as well that derived from churches as from palaces and 
public buildings, became the prey of the Vandals. The statues of 
the gods, which since the introduction of Christianity had not been 
removed, the ornaments of the capitol, and the sacred vessels of 
the temple at Jerusalem, which had been brought from thence by 
Titus, are all said to have been embarked for Carthage and to have 
been lost on the passage. The Empress Eudoxia and her three 
daughters, with many other Roman women and children, are said to 
have been brought to Carthage by Genseric. 

On learning of the death of Petronius Maximus the vacant throne 
is said to have tempted the ambition of Avitus of Gaul, who was 
now on a visit to Theodoric II., at Toulouse. Theodoric favoring 
his suit Avitus hastened to Rome where he was received as emperor. 
Count Ricimer, a descendant of the kings of the Goths, had com- 
mand of the Gothic troops, which now formed the defense of Italy ; 



72 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and, considering that he should not have been consulted in the 
choice of an emperor, became indignant. He, therefore, com- 
pelled Avitus to abdicate and raised to the throne in his stead 
Majorian, a man of virtue and parts. This man attempted a re- 
formation of existing abuses, but the various classes which were 
deriving advantage from these united against him. The shipping 
of Italy now suffered severely from the piracies of the Vandals, 
and Majorian built a fleet intending it for protection and conquest. 
Its failure in this object gave to Ricimer a pretext for dethroning 
Majorian. He next elevated Severus to the imperial title, while, 
in effect, exercising himself the sovereign power. Finding a navy 
absolutely necessary to counteract the depredations of the African 
Vandals, Ricimer solicited the aid of Leo, the emperor of the east; 
and he granted his assistance on the condition that he should have 
the nomination of an emperor. He accordingly named Athemius, 
who repaired to Italy, wherein to strengthen his power he gave his 
daughter in marriage to Ricimer. Notwithstanding the fleets of 
both the eastern and western empires were now employed against 
the Vandals they failed to deprive them of their naval supremacy ; 
and Ricimer now becoming jealous of Athemius and espousing the 
cause of Olybrius, who had married the daughter of the empress 
Eudoxia, marched his army to Rome, took the city and delivered 
it up to pillage. Having murdered Athemius he elevated Olybrius 
to the imperial title. In forty days after Italy rejoiced in the 
death of this tyrant, who had made or unmade four emperors, 
and sacked the city of Rome. Seven months was the limit of the 
reign of Olybrius, upon whose death two competitors presented 
themselves for the vacant throne, Glycerius, a Roman, and Julius 
Nepos, the governor of Dalmatia. Glycerius contenting himself 
with a bishoprick, Julius Nepos became emperor and reigned one 
year. Orestes, a Pannonian, who commanded a motley army of 
foreigners, that had enlisted in the Roman service, now excited a 
rebellion among them. On their approach to Ravenna Julius Nepos 
retreated to Dalmatia, and Orestes proclaimed his son, Augustulus 
Romulus as emperor of the west. But Orestes found it difficult to 
support his son in power. The barbarians who caused his eleva- 
tion, not content with the increase of their pay and privileges pe- 
titioned him to divide among them a third of the lands of Italy. To 
their capricious, and, as would seem, brutal demand, Orestes re- 
fused to accede and sacrifice one-third of the inhabitants of the soil. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 73 

Among those barbarian defenders was Odoacer, king of the Heruli, 
a savage people, who had emigrated from the shores of the Baltic 
to Pannonia and Noricum. These he led to Rome; took and pil- 
laged the city; executed Orestes; and assumed the sovereignty 
under the title of king of Italy in the year 476. Augustulus Romu- 
lus gave over the emblems of authority to Odoacer and took refuge 
in his camp: And thus passes from the historic vista, the last em- 
peror, so-called, of Rome. 

That the name of this last emperor should contain that of the 
first king and founder of Rome as well as that of its first emperor 
has been regarded as singular, in that it recalls to mind the infancy, 
the maturity, and the fall of Rome. From the first founding of 
the city by Romulus to this date there is reckoned 1229 years; and 
and from the date of the battle of Actium when Augustus became 
first emperor there had passed 507 years ; while the eastern empire 
in a state of almost slightly gradual decline continued to exist 
nearly one thousand years longer. 

The kingdom of the Heruli lasted over Italy for seventeen 
years; when in 493, it was supplanted by a kingdom of the Os- 
trogoths. These last, although of the same national stock as that 
people that conquered Italy under Alaric were yet only distant re- 
lations of theirs. This was of descent from a branch of the Os- 
trogoths which followed the standard of Atila, in his invasion of 
the empire. On his death, which is entered for the year 453, they 
revolted from the Hunns and established their independence by 
arms. To Zeno, the emperor of the east, Theodoric, the son of the 
Ostrogothic king, was given as an hostage, on an alliance having 
been formed between them and that emperor. He was a youth of 
talents, ambition and courage, and, after a residence of a few years 
at the Byzantine court, he returned to his nation accomplished 
above the degree common to the best of his people. To divert 
the Gothic arms from his own dominions the emperor Zeno gave 
Theodoric the kingdom of Italy, which Odoacer had wrested from 
the Gothic Romans. Odoacer was defeated by Theodoric and the 
kingdom was now of the Ostrogoths, established upon the ruins of 
that of the Heruli. 

Theodoric reigned thirty-three years and under his government, 
Italy was in a state of comparative peace. One-third of the lands 
was divided among the Goths, the Italians being left in possession 
of two-thirds. The Italians also retained their own civil adminis- 



74 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

tration, with their customs, dress and national freedom. Theodoric 
executed Boethius, "the last Roman orator," on the charge of 
treason against his orovernment, for which act he has been accused 
not only of cruelty but injustice. Leaving no son, he, at his death, 
commended to the nobles his daughter Amalasontha, and her son, 
then ten years of a^e. The son soon died with disease and the 
mother after some years of able administration was killed. 
Theudat succeeded, who was soon displaced to make room for Viti- 
ges. This monarch was conquered by Belisarius and carried in 
chains to Constantinople there to grace his triumph : but on the 
departure of Belisarius from Italy, the Goths rebelled and pro- 
claimed Totila their kins:. HirnNarses defeated and slew on the re- 
turn of the army in 553, and Italy was annexed to the eastern 
empire. 

After the destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom, Italy was 
ruled for the eastern empire by officers called exarchs, whose seat 
of government was at Ravenna. Their peace was disturbed by the 
Lombards, particularly by their king Alboin, who in the reign of 
Justin II, the immediate successor of Justinian (578-582), with 
little opposition possessed himself of that portion of northern 
Italy, afterwards called Lombardy. But, although the Lombards 
continued to possess that territory, Alboin" s reign over it was 
short, his wife Rosamond, a princess of the Gepida?, whom he had 
brutally made to drink out of her slain father's scull, havino - with 
her own hand rid herself and the world of an odious tyrant. 

From the foregoing, therefore, it is seen that, from about the 
year 408, when Alaric first entered the country, until the year 553, 
Italy was in effect in the power of the Goths, which is a period of 
145 years. The Goths for the period between 408 and 476, com- 
prising 68 years, put up rulers and put them down at their pleas- 
ure ; but pandering to the vanity of the Roman people, in calling 
these creatures of their own selecting, emperors. Italy may, 
therefore, be considered as lost to the empire at Constantinople, 
after the year 408, and thence to the year 553. 

Coming back now to the eastern empire, I may say that the sub- 
sidies paid by the eastern emperors to the barbarians, after the 
death of Theodosius, with the stronger allurements which Italy 
presented to them, tended to leave that empire in comparative 
tranquility. 

The history represents Arcadius and Honorious as sons of 
Theodosius and as minors at their father's death in 395: and one 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 75 

named Kufinus, a Gaul, as conducting the administration for 
Arcadius, at Constantinople, while one named Stilicho, a Vandal, 
was doing the like thing for Honorius, his brother, at Rome. 

Saying nothing now in relation to Honorius, the same history 
represents Arcadius, whom we see coming to the throne a minor in 
395, as dying and being succeeded in his government of the eastern 
empire by his son, Theodosius II. in 408. This king is also repre- 
sented as a minor at his accession, and as being during his whole 
reign subject to the influence of his sister, Pulcheria; who, on his 
death succeeded to the throne, " and was the first female who 
swayed the sceptre of the Roman empire. She was a princess of 
genius and virtue ; and on her death the Theodosian family became 
extinct in the east." The empress Pulcheria appears to have de- 
parted this life in the east about the same time, or perhaps a year 
or two before the empress and regent Placidia demised in the 
west. It is not at all likely that these two appellations stand for 
the same person. Placidia is represented as being daughter to 
Theodosius I. by a second marriage, and Pulcheria as being his 
granddaughter through his son, Arcadius; but from what follows, 
you will see that there is no reason why they should not have been 
half sisters and daughters of Theodosius I. by different marriages, 
if perchance they were ? 

For speaking of Arcadius, who was a minor on coming to the 
throne in 395, and who died in 408, we reasonably conclude he 
must have been young when his daughter Pulcheria and his son 
Theodosius II. were born to him. And since we have fair reason 
to conclude that Theodosius I. made no division of the empire at 
the time he died, as is represented in the history; since also we find 
in the old language the name forms Arcadius and Honorius to be 
simply variations of the same name;* and since it is pretty evident 
the name form Theodosius was not the baptismal name of either 
Theodosius I. or Theodosius II., the form Theodosius being a Chris- 
tian name, given afterwards and only in the histories ;f we there- 
fore reasonably conclude that the baptismal name of Theodosius II. 
was the same as that of his father (whom we conclude to have 
been Theodosius I.), that is, either the Greek form Arcadius or 
the Latin form Honorius, or more likely the Gaulic form Caethair 



* Gr. Arcadius=Gaulic Chathair=Chathanair=Chonair=Latin Honorius. 
+ &£<)$- dt3wfj.i, given of God, an honorary appellation given by the church since this em- 
peror is about as distinguished a churchman as was Constantine I. 



76 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

or Caethanair, all of which are, of course, the same name, as it ap- 
pears in these different languages. You see, therefore, that in the 
way here explained, Theodosius I. and Theodosius II. are all the 
men that are to be reckoned as standing for those names; and how 
that historians and copyists, who did not understand the equiva- 
lence of these name forms as given in the original languages, might 
make the mistake of making the two or three different forms of 
name of the same man stand for as many different men. This making 
appear of different men, as represented by the variations of name 
of the same man, is what is often found to occur in the interweav- 
ing of the historical romance into the tissue of history proper. 

By our explanation, therefore, Theodosius II would in the 
Latin language be called in his day Honorius; and hence in the 
Latin provinces of the west, in documents, etc., his name would 
be entered Honorius ; while in the Greek provinces of the east the 
name would be entered Arcadius; or later, in the history written, 
by the churchmen, Theodosius II. The death of Honorius is put 
down for the year 423, and that of Theodosius II. for 450, when 
he dies as the consequence of a fall from his horse into the river 
Lycus in the neighborhood of Constantinople; his sister Pulcheria 
who had during his life acted as his principal adviser, now assuming 
the supreme government in his stead as empress. But a considera- 
tion of the whole subject leaves little doubt that these two names as 
well as the form Arcadius refer to the same person, who, if he 
were eighteen years of age as Gibbon says Arcadius was at the 
time of the death of his father in 395, would have been 73 years old 
in 450 if he had lived to that time; or, if he were eleven years old 
in 395, as is said by the same author Honorious was, and had 
lived to 450 he would be then 6Q years old; or if he were born in 
the year 400, as the same author says Theodosius II was, then he 
lived to the even fifty years of age and died as a result of accident.* 

* Under the year 408 Gibbon says: " At length Arcadius expired in the palace of Constanti- 
nople. It is impossible to delineate his character, since, in a period very copiously furnished 
with historical materials, it has not been possible to remark one action that properly belongs 
to the son of Theodosius." Vol. II, p. 295, Dec. and Fall. 

Speaking of Honorius, p. 211-12 Id. he says: " The joy of the African triumph was happily 
connected with the nuptials of the emperor Honorius and of his counsin Maria, the daughter 
of Stilicho; and this equal and honorable alliance seemed to invest the powerful minister with 
the authority of a parent over his submissive pupil," — "the amorous impatience, which 
Claudian" (a sententious poet) " attributes to the young prince must excite the smiles of the 
court; and his beautous spouse (if she deserved the praise of beauty) had not much to fear or 
to hope from the passions of her lover. Honorius was only in the fourteenth year of his age* 
Serena, the mother of his bride, deferred by art or persuasion, the consummation of the royal 
nuptials ; Maria died a virgin after she had been ten years a wife; and the chastity of the 
emperor was secured by the coldness, or perhaps the debility of his constitution. His subjects 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 77 

The seat of this emperor, as of the Theodosian house, is also to be 
thought of as not in the west but at Constantinople . With the empress 
Pulcheria, the Theodosian dynasty ended. Her husband Marcian, 
continuing to reign with a vigorous and prudent policy, begun a 
new dynasty. This man, despising the artifices by which some of 
his predecessors had purchased immunity from the arms of the 
Hunns, stopped the payment of the subsidies. The Hunns thereupon 
threatened invasion ; but the death of Atila about this time averted 
it. Leo, Zeno, Anastasius and Justin succeeded each other in this 
order, the last being succeeded by Justinian, whose deeds are more 
celebrated than those of any of the four who preceded him. He 



who attentively studied the character of their young sovereign discovered that Honorius was 
without passions and consequently without talents; and that his feeble and languid disposi- 
tion was alike incapable of discharging the duties of his rank or of enjoying the pleasures of 
his age."— " The predecessors of Honorius were accustomed to animate, by their example or 
at least by their presence, the valor of the legions; and the dates of their laws attest the per- 
petual activity of their motions through the provinces of the Roman world. But the son of Theo- 
dosius passed the slumber of his life a captive in his palace, a stranger in his country, and 
the patient, almost the indifferent, spectator of the ruin of the western empire, which was re- 
peatedly attacked and finally subverted by the arms of the Barbarians. In the eventful history 
of a reign of twenty years it will seldom be necessary to mention the name of the 
emperoi Honorius." 

On pgs. 295-6-7 the historian under the year 408 says: " Arcadius considered with anxious 
foresight the helpless condition of his son Theodosius who was no more than seven years of 
age, the dangerous faction of a minority and the aspiring spirit of Jezdegerd, the Persian 
monarch. Instead of tempting the allegiance of an ambitious subject to the participation of 
supreme power he boldly appealed to the magnanimity of a king; and placed, by a solemn 
testament, the sceptre of the east in the hands of Jezdegerd himself. The royal guardian ac- 
cepted and discharged his honorable trust with unexampled fidelity; and the infancy of 
Theodosius was protected by the arms and councils of Persia. Such is the singular narrative 
of Procopius and his veracity is not disputed by Agathias, while he presumes to dis- 
sent from his iudgment, and to arraign the wisdom of a Christian Emperor, who so rashly 
though so fortunately, committed his son and dominions to the unknown faith of a stranger, a 
rival and a heathen. At the distance of 150 years this political question might be debated in 
the court of Justinian; but a prudent historian will refuse to examine the propriety till he has 
ascertained the truth of the testament of Arcadius. As it stands without a parallel in the 
history of- the world we may justly require that it should be attested by the positive and 
unanimous evidence of contemporaries. The strange novelty of the event, which excites our 
distrust, must have attracted this notice; and their universal silence annihilates the vain 
tradition of the succeeding age. The maxims of Roman jurisprudence, if they could fairly be 
transferred from private property to public dominion, would have adjudged to the emperor 
Honorious the guardianship of his nephew, till he had attained, at least, the fourteenth year of 
his age. But the weakness of Honorius, and the calamities of his reign disqualified him from 
prosecuting this natural claim," etc. — " Under a prince, whose M'cakness is disguised by the 
external signs of manhood and discretion, the most worthless favorites may secretly dispute 
the empire of the palace; and dictate to submissive provinces the commands of a master, 
whom they direct and despise," etc. — ** But the Romans had so long been accustomed to the 
authority of a monarch, that the first, even among the females, who displayed any courage or 
capacity, was permitted to ascend the vacant throne of (the minor) Theodosius. His sMer 
Pulcheria, who was only two years older than himself, received at the age of sixteen the 
title of Augusta; and though her favor might be sometimes clouded by caprice or intrigue, she 
continued to govern the eastern empire near forty years; during the long minority of her 
brother and, after his death, in her own name, and in the name of Marcian her nominal nus- 
band." My own opinion is given above, namely, that Arcadius and Honorius are but other 
forms of the name of Theodosius II; and further, I may say, that he and his Bister Pulcheria, 
were more likely to have been the children of a brother of Theodosius I than his own children. 



78 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ascended the throne in 527 A. D., and his reign may perhaps be 
thought to form an epoch. The kingdom of the Vandals in Africa 
had now long been established. Hilderic, grandson of Genseric, 
succeeded him, but was deposed by Gelimer. Justinian, desirous 
to recover the province, affected to favor Hilde,ric and sent Belisar- 
ius into Africa with an army. He reduced Carthage, conquered 
the Vandals, and carried Gelimer a prisoner to Constantinople. 
Hilderic having been executed the race of Genseric had become 
extinct and Africa again belonged to the eastern empire. Belisarius 
next marched into Italy where he defeated the Ostrogoths, subdued 
Italy and Sicily and returned to Constantinople with Vitiges, the 
Gothic king, in chains. 

By these successes the jealousy of Chosroes, the now reigning 
king of Persia, was aroused, and he renewed the war which had 
been suspended by a truce. Belisarius having been sent against 
him the war was waged with alternate success, until the declining 
years of Chosroes and Justinian cooled their military ardor and 
procured a further truce for forty } r ears. 

Belisarius was next dispatched to Italy against the Goths who 
had rebelled ; but being recalled through jealousy, which had 
arisen in the emperor's mind, Narses, another general, was substi- 
tuted in his place, who effected their subjugation. That country 
was now governed by officers called Exarchs, whose seat was at 
Ravenna, as said above. 

The empire was now invaded by the Bulgarians and Sclavonians, 
who crossed the Danube, ravaged Macedonia and Thrace, and car- 
ried their depredations to within a few miles of Constantinople. 
Belisarius bavins: been sent against them defeated them ; but this 
was the last of his victories ; and he who might be said to have re- 
stored the empire was doomed, as is said, by the ingratitude of the 
emperor, to spend his old age in disgrace and penury. 

While the empire had gloriously sustained itself abroad the cap- 
ital was torn by designing factions. Earthquakes of unusual ex- 
tent and duration bad spread desolation in different parts. In the 
ruins of Antioch alone 250,000 persons were supposed to have 
been buried. A dreadful pestilence also spread its ravages through 
the empire, and for a time its virulence seemed unchanged by the 
change of the seasons. In Constantinople during three months 
five to ten thousand persons are said to have died daily. Mjany of 
the cities of the east were depopulated and " during the reign of 
Justinian there was a visible diminution of the human species." 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE. 79 

With the assistance of Tribonian, an eminent lawyer, Justinian 
digested and simplified the mass of laws, which had been accumu- 
lating till his time ; and formed these bodies of laws, called the 
Justinian code, the Pandects and the Institutes. This system of 
jurisprudence was the greatest work of the'age, and from it Justin- 
ian derives his chief reputation. 

Justin II, the nephew and successor of Justinian, associated with 
himself in the government Tiberius, the captain of the guards. 
The Lombards, under Alboin, now having conquered the northern 
part of Italy, established a kingdom which they called Lombardy: 
578-582. By the nomination of Tiberius, Maurice succeeded him. 
He, taking part in a quarrel now existing in Persia between Hor- 
mouz, the son of Chosroes, and his general Bahram, sent an army 
into Persia, which placed Chosroes II, the son of Hormouz, on the 
throne of that kingdom. 

The Avars, an Asiatic race, having fled from the victorious arms 
of the Turks or Turcomans, had, by their alliance with the Lom- 
bards, destroyed the Gepidse. The Lombards then having carried 
their nation and their arms into Italy, the Avars settled in the 
country which they had vacated in Pannonia, and extended their 
dominion from the Euxine to the foot of the Alps. While the 
army of the empire was absent in Persia the Avars threatened the 
empire from the north; and as soon as it had returned home 
Maurice employed it against these barbarians. With the exception 
of Priscus, who obtained several victories, which, however, turned 
out to be unprofitabfe, Maurice was unfortunate in the selection of 
his generals. 

The emperor having ordered the army to make the country of the 
Avarstheir winter quarters, that army declared him no longerworthy 
to reign and elected Phocas,a man of a brutal character in his place. 
The rebel army now hastened its return to Constantinople whence 
Maurice had fled for safety to Chalcedon. Hither the emissaries 
of Phocas having followed him, caused him to witness the mur- 
der of his five sons and then slew himself. Phocas, who soon after 
found himself exposed to a revolt of the province of Africa, and to 
the arms of Chosroes II., who made the death of his benefactor, 
Maurice, a cause of war, was compelled to sign an ignominious 
peace with the Avars. Chosroes wrested from the empire many of 
its eastern fortresses and carried devastation into Syria. 

Heraclius, son of the governor of Africa, who had never ac- 



80 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

knowledged the authority of Phocas, advanced at the head of the 
African forces, and, by a union with the disaffected, made himself 
master of Constantinople. Phocas, he executed forthwith. Chosroes 
meantime took possession of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria; 
and, while one division of his army extended his conquests to 
Tripoli, another marched to the Bosphorous and for ten years lay 
encamped in the vicinity of Constantinople. The Avars, renewing 
their hostilities, pitched their camps upon the plains of Thrace. 
Thus was the empire threatened on every side. In this extremity 
the church's funds were appropriated to the service of the empire; 
and a large army was levied, at the same time that a generous sub- 
sidy purchased while it did not secure the neutrality of the Avars. 
Heraclius, declining to engage the Persian army , which lay encamped 
opposite to the city, yet, having a sufficient number of vessels at 
his command, transported an army to the confines of Syria and 
Cilicia, and encamped near Issus, on the ground where Alexander 
vanquished Darius. Here he organized and disciplined his troops. 
The Persians having followed him to Cilicia he drew into an en- 
gagement and defeated. 

Heraclius, in the next campaign, went north, passed the Euxine 
and traversed the mountains of Armenia. To compel Chosroes to 
recall his armies for the defense of his own kingdom he penetrated 
into the heart of Persia. But the Persian king still maintained an 
army near Constantinople to second the operations of the treacher- 
ous chief of the Avars, who, notwithstanding he had received a 
subsidy for his neutrality, had entered into an alliance with the 
Persians. 

A numerous barbarian host of Avars, Gepidae, Russians, Bul- 
garians and Sclavonians now invested Constantinople, but were re- 
pulsed with great slaughter, while the Persians, on the opposite side 
of the Bosphorus, beheld their discomfiture without being able to 
render them assistance. 

Meantime Heraclius, having strengthened his army by an alliance 
with the Turks, fought and defeated the Persians in a battle at 
Nineveh. Chosroes shortly afterwards was assassinated by his son 
Siroes, who concluded a peace with the Romans by which he relin- 
quished the conquests of his father. Heraclius, withdrawing his 
forces from Persia, returned to his own capital in triumph, in 628 
A. D. He, however, lived to see the province of Syria severed 
from his empire and Jerusalem possessed by the Moslems. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 81 

His successors for a considerable period present no name very 
worthy of note. Justinian II., being deposed and expelled from 
the empire in 685, retired to Bulgaria, " a new kingdom on the 
northwestern shore of the Euxine." He, being there furnished an 
army, returned and recovered his throne. Having again proceeded 
to his cruelties he was assassinated and with him ended the dynasty 
of Heraclius. 

Leo III. commenced the Isaurian dynasty, which arose from an 
obscure origin. In his reign began the controversy respecting the 
the worship of images ; the Roman church contending for the prac- 
tice and the Greek church against it. This dispute separated the 
eastern and western churches and contributed to disengage Italy 
from all dependence upon the eastern empire. By the infamous 
Irene, however, image worship was restored, in about the year 781. 
She was the empress of Leo IV. and the mother of Constantine 
VI. ; and her husband dying while her son was yet but ten years 
old, made her regent of the empire. Constantine arriving at ma- 
turity she still wished to retain the power and hence the most bitter 
enmity arose between her and her son. At length, ambition stilling 
every feeling of maternal affection, the brutal woman deprived her 
son of his sight and almost of his life. After Irene had reigned 
five years Nicephorus, her treasurer, seized the throne and doomed 
her to exile in the island of Lesbos. 

This emperor instigated Swatoslaus, the Russian prince, to under- 
take the conquest of the Bulgarians. This having been achieved 
the Russians approached, in the estimation of Nicephorus, uncom- 
fortably near to Constantinople. He however was unable to cope 
with the enemy he had brought into his dominions ; but his suc- 
cessor, John Zimisces, succeeded in driving them beyond his 
borders. This last emperor led an army into Syria and recovered 
much that had been now for some time lost to the Mahometans. 
After him the empire again sunk into insignificance, under the gov- 
ernment of inefficient princes. Basil, the Macedonian, was the 
founder of a new dynasty. In the reign of Michael VI., the last 
of his race, the Byzantines, awaking to a sense of their degrada- 
tion conferred upon Isaac Comnenus the imperial dignity, which he 
possessed for only two years, his declining health causing him to 
abdicate. The Comneni were an illustrious family of Roman origin. 
Alexius Comnenus, his immediate successor, occupied the Byzan- 
tine throne at the time of the first crusade. He found himself in 



82 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

circumstances cf great difficulty. The eastern provinces of the 
empire had been conquered by the Turks while its possessions in 
southern Italy had been usurped by the Normans, who were advanc- 
ing towards Constantinople. Alexius, without soldiers or money, 
found himself compelled to maintain a contest with powerful 
enemies. Yet making the best preparations he could in the cir- 
cumstances, he marched into Epirus to meet the Normans, who, 
under Robert Gruiscard, had laid siege to Durazzo. Alexius was 
defeated, yet, in all his calamities, he is represented in the history 
of those times written by his daughter, Anna Comnena, as sustain- 
ing himself with dignity. The progress of the Normans at this 
time was stayed by the return of Robert to Italy to quell disturb- 
ances which had arisen an his absence. These having been settled 
he resumed his eastern enterprise. Meantime Alexius had im- 
proved his naval force and now disputed with the Normans the 
dominion of the sea. Near the island of Corfu three engagements 
took place, the third resulting in a victory for the Normans. But 
the death of Robert relieved Alexius from the further attacks of 
that powerful enemy. 

On the passage of the first crusade in 1097 Alexius is represented 
as having pursued rather a treacherous than an ambiguous course 
of policy towards the crusaders; for, firstly, while he urged on the 
western Christians to the holy war, he gave them no aid,^but rather 
impeded their progress ; and, secondly, when Nice surrendered to 
the crusaders a secret treaty was concluded between an agent of 
Alexius and the Turks by which that city was conceded as the 
rightful possession of the eastern emperor. Thus and besides while 
the crusaders went onward toward Jerusalem and occupied in full 
the Mahometan arms, Alexius recovered by his arms possession of 
many of the cities, territories and islands of Asia Minor, which 
had been conquered by the Turks. He thus left to his successor 
the empire with its boundaries enlarged and in a more prosperous 
condition generally than that in which he had found it. 

His son and successor, John, held the reins of government for 
twenty-five years. He was both vigorous and clement in his ad- 
ministration, and in his reign, which ended in 1143, the penalty of 
death was abolished. The son and successor of John was named 
Manuel. He was a man of , great physical strength and prowess and 
was occupied in wars against the"Turks and barbarians north of the 
Danube. In the history of the eastern empire for fifty years after 
Manuel there appears no very prominent name or event. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 83 

In the year 1195, the throne of Constantinople was occupied by 
Isaac Angelus, who was then dethroned, deprived of his sight and 
imprisoned by his brother Alexius. This act introduced the cru- 
saders into Constantinople, with the Latin dynasty, which I relate 
under the head of the crusades. 

On the recovery of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261, Mi- 
chael Palaeologus, usurping the empire, blinded and banished John 
Lascaris, the heir to the throne. The Patriarch of Constantinople 
boldly excommunicated Michael for those his crimes and stirred up 
a large party in the state ag'ainst him. In the reign of Androni- 
cus, the son and successor of Michael, the Catalans, or Catalonians, 
from Spain, who had served in the Sicilian wars, at their close, 
swarmed into the eastern empire in quest of plunder. The wars, too, 
which the einperor Andronicus waged against his grandson, whose 
profligate life had induced him to seek out another successor, were 
quite disastrous to the state. The civil war was twice interrupted 
and again renewed, when at length, after seven years' contention, 
the younger Andronicus entered the capital in triumph. The aged 
emperbr, in 1320, abdicated the crown, which the younger seized; 
but while he thus became the first of the millions he was himself 
the slave of intemperance and debauchery. Carrying war into 
Asia he found himself unable to contend with the Ottoman Turks. 
At the time of his death the empire was much disturbed by civil 
commotions. 

During the thirty-six years' reign of John Palaeologus the distress 
of the empire was constantly augmenting. He blinded and impris- 
oned Andronicus, his son, and John, his grandson, making Manuel, 
his second* son, his heir, it is said, at the instigation of Amurath 
the Ottoman Sultan. But in this his subjects did not agree with 
him; for they removed the two blind princes] from the prison to 
the throne. The emperor with Manuel making his escape from the 
city, civil war was again added to the other disasters of the state. 
On the basis of a partition of the regaining possessions of the 
empire a reconciliation was at length effected between the contend- 
ing princes; Constantinople being assigned to Manuel a^d John 
Palaeologus, the latter of whom died shortly after, and all without 
the walls to the blind princes. Bajazet, the Ottoman sultan, now 
threatened the city. Upon the basis of an annual tribute from the 
eastern empire and the toleration of the Mahometan religion a truce 
was concluded in 1399. This truce was, however, soon violated by 



84 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Bajazet, who again besieged Constantinople under pretense of vin- 
dicating the rights of John, the blind prince. Manuel sought refuge 
inflight and aid from France; and Bajazet, having placed John 
upon the throne, then claiming the city for himself, laid siege to it. 
It is said Constantinople must now have fallen had not a menacing 
power in the east attracted the attention of Bajazet. These were 
the Ottoman Turks of whose origin we shall now speak briefly : 

The Ottoman Turks. 

On the destruction of the kingdom of the Seljoukian Turks in 
the western part of Asia Minor, by the descendants of Jenghis 
Khan many of the Turkish chiefs retired among the mountains and 
established small principalities. One of these was the Ottoman, 
founded by Othman, whose reign of twenty-seven years was one of 
war and conquest. Prusa, near the Propontis was made the capital 
of his kingdom. Othman was succeeded by his son Orchan, who 
continued his encroachments upon the eastern empire, conquered 
the province of Bythinia and obtained a victory over the younger 
Andronicus. Solyman, the son of Orchan, with an army, crossed 
the Hellespont in the civil wars of the princes of the eastern em- 
pire. They then seized upon the fortresses in Thrace thus obtain- 
ing a permanent footing in Europe. 

Solyman and Orchan both having died Amurath, the son of Or- 
chan, succeeded to his brother. The Turkish subjugation of the 
empire in Europe he continued making AdrianopLe his European 
capital. He then marched against the warlike tribes between the 
Danube and the Adriatic. Although victorious in a battle with 
these nations in Servia he yet fell by the hand of a Servian soldier, 
who starting up from among the heaps of slain upon the battle 
field stabbed to death the destroyer of his country's independence. 
It was Amurath, who originated the janizaries, the praetorians of 
the Ottoman empire. Selected from among his captives these were 
educated in the Musselman religion, consecrated bv a dervish and 
trained to the exercise of arms. Amurath was succeeded by his 
son Bajazet the rapidity of whose marches and conquests procured 
for him among his people the name of ilderim or the lightning. 
In Asia he extended the Ottoman empire ; and in Europe he sub- 
jugated the remaining parts of Thrace, Macedonia and Thessaly. 
He marched into Hungary and defeated at Nicopolis a combined 
army of French and Germans. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 85 

I have mentioned above the interference of Bajazet in the affairs 
of the princes of the eastern empire, of his besieging Constan- 
tinople, and placing the blind John upon the throne. This siege 
he was necessitated to abandon in order to defend his Asiatic pos- 
sessions from an irruption of the Moguls under Tamerlane in 1399. 
This last named chief was a descendant in the female line of Jeng- 
hiz Khan, who, from being governor of a province of Transoxiana, 
had raised himself to the sovereignty of the Mogul empire. In 
one year's campaign he had possessed himself of Delhi, had passed 
the Ganges and advanced to the Buhrampooter, when intelligence 
of the conquests of Bajazet led him to return. Having conquered 
the Christians in Georgia and one city in Anatolia Tamerlane left 
for a time the Ottoman dominions. He conquered the Turkish 
emirs at Aleppo, the capital of Syria; but met with a temporary 
check at Damascus from the Mamelukes of Egypt. 

At Angora the forces of Tamerlane came up with the Turks, 
who imagined themselves well prepared to receive them ; but in 
this they were mistaken; for there they were defeated and their 
Sultan, Bajazet, made prisoner. At first " Tamerlane affected to 
treat his distinguished prisoner with great consideration, and made 
to him moralizing speeches; but afterwards he put him in an iron 
cage in which he was carried about to grace his triumphal pro- 
gresses. Tamerlane's intention of invadi; g Europe being frustrated, 
it is said, by the want of a fleet to transport his Moguls over the Bos- 
phorus, he next projected the conquest of China, where the dy- 
nasty of Jenghis had recently been overthrown; but the execution 
of this plan his death frustrated. 

Though the Ottoman power in Asia was for a time suppressed, 
it was by no means eradicated ; the sons of Bajazet were left in 
possession of the different provinces of the kingdom; discord and 
civil wars followed, which ceased only with the death of all save 
Mahomet L, under whose sway the empire was restored. To Ma- 
homet succeeded Amurath II., who renewed the siege of Constan- 
tinople, but was recalled by a revolt in his Asiatic dominions. 

The advance of the Turkish power in Europe caused pope 
Eugenius to endeavor to form a league among all the powers of 
Christendom against it. Ladislaus, who now united in his person 
the kingdoms of Hungary and Poland, undertook the war. His 
army was augumented by soldiers from France and Germany, and 
buoyed up by the counsels and encouragement of the pope's 
legate, Cardinal Julian; as well as by the leadership of the brave 



86 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Hungarian general, John Hunniades. By two successful battles 
the Christians drew from Amurath an order of peace, by which he 
was to withdraw from their frontier. But contrary to the steady 
counsel of Hunniades, the intrigues and exhortations of the cardi- 
nal prevailed, and the Christians violated the treaty. The French 
and German volunteers had, on the first sound of peace, departed 
for their homes; yet with an army diminished by their departure, 
Ladislaus marched to again encounter Amurath. Incensed and 
irritated by the bad faith of his opponents, the Sultan prepared to 
defend himself. The contending armies encountered each other on 
the field of Varna, in 1444, and here a most sanguinary battle ter- 
minated in the triumph of the Mahometans. On that field Ladis- 
laus, with 10,000 Christians, was slain; but so great was the loss 
of the Turks, that Amurath declared another such victory would 
prove his ruin. For many years afterwards the valiant Hunniades, 
who survived, defended his frontier from the Turkish arms. 

The Turks Capture Constantinople in 1453 A. D. 

Mahomet II., who succeeded his father on the Ottoman throne, 
practiced much the arts of deception. While making professions 
of friendship to Constantine, the last of the emperors of the east, 
he was secretly maturing plans for the conquest of his capital. 
On the European side of the Bosphorus he erected a fortress, which 
gave him command of the streets of the city. Daring the winter 
preceding the siege, the capital was filled with distress and dismay. 
Constantine XII., with a most manly spirit, endeavored continu- 
ally to animate the fainting hearts of his people, to cause them to 
lay aside their divisions, and inspire them with heroic ardor in 
defense of their patrimony. To the Christian monarchs and breth- 
ren of the west, he conveyed intelligence of his distressful condi- 
tion. But amid the petty contentions and the din of arms, which 
now occupied the western peoples, the petitions of Constantine 
passed unheeded, and their own danger from the Turks was disre- 
garded. Constantine' s next attempt to effect a reconciliation of 
the churches, which might enlist the pope in his cause, only brought 
upon him the wrath of the Greek churches, and involved the city 
jn more confusion. 

Mahomet, meanwhile, continued actively his preparations for the 
siege, which, early in the spring, he began by sea and land. But 
a small fleet of live ships, furnished by Scily, the Morea and some 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 87 

of the islands of the Archipelago, having triumphantly entered the 
harbor, after having gained a splendid victory over the Turkish fleet, 
which guarded the entrance to the Bosphorus, the spirits of those 
within the city revived. A plan was now devised by Mahomet, by 
which his fleet obtained possession of the harbor, the entrance to 
which was guarded by a chain and defended by the vessels of the em- 
pire. He caused a canal of nearly six miles in length to be dug over 
land, lined with planks and smeared with grease, and in the space 
of one night, by the help of engines and a prodigious number of 
men, he had a fleet of more than a hundred vessels drawn through 
this dry trench, and launched all in the harbor. After enduring a 
siege of fifty-three days, the city was taken by assault; Constan- 
tine XII., the last of the Caesars, falling while bravely fighting at 
his post, with multitudes of his people slain around him. The city 
endured the horrors of sack and pillage, made doubly destructive 
by the animosity whiuh the Mahometans felt towards the Chris- 
tians. Mahomet II., now in 1453, made Constantinople the capital 
the empire, and the remainder of the eastern empire soon fell be- 
fore the Moslem arms. Under a succession of able princes, who 
successively filled the throne, the Ottoman power became con- 
solidated. 

The destruction of Paganism in the days of Theodosius (378-395 
A. D.) is the most notable example which history affords of the ex- 
tirpation of any ancient and popular superstition. The Christians, 
more especially the clergy, had supported with impatience the pru- 
dent delays of Constantine, and the impartial toleration of the elder 
Valentinian, " nor could they deem their conquest perfect or secure so 
long as their adversaries were suffered to exist." The influence which 
Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and his brethren had acquired over the 
youthful Emperor Gratian, and his successor, Theodosius the Younger, 
was emploj'ed to infuse the principles of persecution into the minds 
of their imperial proselytes. Two specious principles of religious 
jurisprudence were established b} r the orthodox, from whence they 
deduced a direct and rigorous conclusion against the subjects of the 
Empire who still adhered to their ancient religion, namely, that the 
magistrate is in some measure guilty of the crimes which he neglects 
to prohibit or to punish ; and that the idolatrous worship of fabulous 
deities and real demons is the most abominable crime against the 
Creator. The laws of Moses and the examples of Jewish history 
were commonly quoted and applied by the clergy to the reign of 
Christianity. They excited the zeal of the Emperors to vindicate 
their own honor and that of the Deity; and the Pagan temples 



88 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OE, COSMOTHEOT-CGIES, ETC. 

throughout the Empire were subverted about sixty years after the 
conversion of Constantine. In a full meeting of the senate at 
Rome the Emperor Theodosius, then visiting that city, proposed, 
according to the ancient forms of the Republic : Whether the wor- 
ship of Jupiter or that of Christ should be the religion of the Romans ? 
The liberty of suffrages which, through respect for the senate, he 
affected to allow, was destroyed by the hopes and fears which the 
presence of this conqueror inspired ; and his arbitrary exile of 
Symmachus, the ablest and most popular statesman of those times, 
was a sufficient admonition that it might be dangerous to oppose his 
wishes. On a division of the Senate Jupiter was degraded by a very 
large majority ; and historians regard it as a matter of surprise that 
there should be any members courageous enough to declare by their 
speeches and votes that they were still attached to an abdicated 
deity. The hasty conversion of the senate must, however, be 
attributed to fear or to sordid motives ; for many of their number 
betrayed afterwards on every favorable occasion their secret disposi- 
tion to throw aside the odious mask of dissimulation. But they 
gradually became fixed in the new religion, as the cause of the 
ancient became hopeless. They yielded to the will of the Emperor, 
to the fashion of the times, and to the entreaties of their wives 
and children, who were instigated and influenced by the rest 
of the nobility. The Bassi, the Paullini, the Gracchi adopted 
the Christian religion ; and the luminaries of the world, the vener- 
able assembly of Catos (such are the high-flown expressions of Pru- 
deutius) were impatient to strip themselves of their pontifical gar- 
ments ; to cast the skin of the old serpent, to assume the snowy 
robes of baptismal innocence, and to humble the pride of the consular 
fasces before the tombs of the martyrs. The industrious citizens 
and the populace who were supported by the public liberality filled 
the churches of the Lateran and the Vatican with an increasing 
throng of devout proselytes. The decrees of the senate which pro- 
scribed the worship of idols were ratified by the general consent of 
the people of Rome ; the splendor of the capitol was defaced, and 
the temples, 424 of which still remained in the city of Rome, and 
the statues of the gods in every quarter of the city, were abandoned 
to ruin and contempt. Thus Rome submitted to the new religion ; 
and the dependent provinces had not yet lost their respect for the 
name and authority of Rome. The Pagan religion was abolished in 
the provinces as early as the year 420 A. D. The ruin of this ancient 
superstition is described by the Sophists of that and the succeeding 
age as a dreadful and amazing calamity which covered the earth with 
darkness and restored the ancient dominion of chaos and of night. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 89 

They relate in solemn and pathetic strains that the temples were 
converted into sepulchres, and that the holy places which had been 
adorned with the statues of the gods were basely polluted by the 
relics of the christian martyrs. " The monks, a race of filthy animals, 
to whom Eunapius is inclined to refuse the name of men, are the 
authors of the new worship which, in the place of those deities that 
are conceived by the understanding, has substituted the meanest and 
most contemptible slaves. The hands of those infamous malefactors 
who for the multitude of their crimes have suffered a just and ignomi- 
nious death, their bodies still marked by the impression of the lash 
and the scars of those tortures which were inflicted by the sentence 
of the magistrates ; such (continues Eunapius) are the gods which 
the earth produces in our days ; such are the martyrs, the supreme 
arbitrators of our prayers and petitions to the Deity, whose tombs 
are now consecrated as the objects of the veneration of the people." 
We may conceive of the surprise of the sophist, who was a spectator 
of this revolution which raised those obscure victims of the laws to 
the rank of celestial deities. The respect which the Christians had 
had for the martyrs of their faith was exalted by time and victory 
into religious adoration ; and they associated the most illustrious of 
the Scripture Saints and Prophets to the honors of the martyrs. In 
the age which followed the conversion of Constantine, the Emperors, 
the Consuls, and the Generals of armies were accustomed devoutly 
to visit the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul upon the Ostian road, 
and afterwards in the Vatican, where, as was supposed, the bones of 
these spiritual heroes were deposited. The new capital of the Roman 
world, unable to produce any ancient and domestic trophies, was 
enriched by the spoils of dependant provinces. The bodies of St. 
Luke, St. Andrew, and St. Timothy were torn from their obscure 
graves, where, if they had ever been buried, they had reposed for 
near three centuries, and transported in solemn pomp to the Church 
of the Apostles, which Constantine had founded in his new city. 
About fifty years after the same city was honored by the presence 
of Samuel, the judge and prophet of Israel. His ashes, deposited in 
a golden vase and covered with a silken veil, were delivered by the 
bishops into each other's hands. The relics of Samuel were received 
by the people with the same joy and veneration which they would 
have shown the living prophet. The highways from Palestine to 
the gates of Constantinople were thronged with a procession, and 
the Emperor Arcadius, the son and successor of Theodosius. at the 
head of the most illustrious members of the senate and Church 
advanced to meet his extraordinary guest, who had always claimed 
the homage of kings. The example of Rome and Constantinople 



90 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

confirmed the faith and discipline of the Catholic world. The 
honors of the saints and martyrs, after a feeble and ineffectual 
murmur of profane reason, were universally established, and in the 
days of St. Ambrose and St. Jerome something was still deemed 
wanting to the sanctity of a Christian Church till it had been con- 
secrated by some portion of holy relics which attracted and influenced 
the devotion of the faithful. 

In the long period of twelve centuries which passed between the 
age of Constantine and that of Luther, the worship of saints and 
relics corrupted the pure and perfect simplicity of the Christian model, 
and the symptoms of degeneracy are discernible in the first genera- 
tion which adopted and cherished this pernicious and abominable 
innovation. The satisfactory experience that the relics of the saints 
and martyrs were more valuable than gold or precious stones stimu- 
lated the clergy to multiply the treasures of the Church. With little 
regard for truth or probability they invented names for skeletons, 
and actions for names ; and the fame of men of Apostolic times was 
darkened by religious fictions. 

To the genuine and primitive band of martyrs they added myriads 
of imaginary heroes, that had never existed except in the imagination 
of crafty and credulous legendaries ; and there is every reason to 
suspect that Tours might not be the only diocese in which the bones 
of a malefactor were adored instead of those of a saint. This su- 
perstitious practice, which tended to increase the temptations to 
fraud and credulity, insensibly extinguished the light of history and 
of reason in the Christian world. But the progress of superstition 
and idolatry would have been much less rapid and victorious had not 
the faith of the people been assisted by the seasonable aid of visions 
and miracles, to ascertain the authenticity and virtue of the most 
suspicious relics. 

In the reign of the younger Theodosius, Lucien, a presbyter of 
Jerusalem and the ecclesiastical minister of the village of Caphar- 
gamala, about twenty miles from the city, related a very singular 
dream, which, to remove his doubts, had been repeated to him on 
three successive Saturdays. A venerable figure stood before him in 
the silence of the night with a long beard, a white robe, and a gold 
rod, and announced himself by the name of Gamaliel, and revealed 
to the astonished presbyter, that his own corpse, with the bodies of 
his son Abbas, his friend Nicodemus, and Stephen the first martyr of 
the Christian faith, were secretly buried in the adjacent field. He 
added with some impatience that it was time to release himself and 
his companions from their obscure prison ; that their appearance 
would be salutory to a distressed world ; and that they had made 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 91 

choice of Lucian to inform the bishop of Jerusalem of their situation 
and their wishes. The doubts and difficulties which still retarded 
the important discovery were successively removed by new visions, 
and the ground was opened by the bishop in the presence of an as- 
sembled multitude. The coffins of Gamaliel, of his son, and of his 
friend were found in regular order ; but when the fourth coffin, which 
contained the remains of Stephen, was shewn to the light, the earth 
trembled, and an odor such as that of Paradise was smelt, which in- 
stantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the bystanders. 
The companions of Stephen were left in their peaceful residence at 
Caphargamala, but the relics of the first martyr were transported to 
a church consecrated to their honor on Mount Zion; and the minute 
particles of these relics were acknowledged in almost every province 
of the Roman Empire to possess a divine and miraculous virtue. 
St. Augustine attested the numerous prodigies which were wrought 
in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen. The bishop of Hippo solemnly 
declares that he has selected those miracles only which were publicly 
certified by the persons who were either the objects or the spectators 
of the power of the martyr. Many prodigies were omitted or for- 
gotten, and Hippo had been less favorably treated than the other 
cities of the province. And yet he enumerates seventy miracles, of 
which three were resurrections from the dead, in the space of two 
years, and within the limits of his own diocese. But, it is strange 
this great saint does not say he was the object or spectator of any 
of these miracles himself. Besides, notice that ominous number 
seventy, as well as three, in his enumeration. If we enlarge our view 
to all the dioceses and all the saints of the Christian world of that 
age, it will not be easy for us to calculate the fables and the decep- 
tions that issued from this inexhaustible source. The innumerable 
miracles of which the tombs of the martyrs were the perpetual thea- 
tre revealed to the credulous believers the state and constitution of 
the visible world, and the religious speculations appeared to be 
founded on the firm basis of experience. Whatever might have been 
the condition of the souls of the vulgar in the long interval between 
the dissolution and resurrection of their bodies, it was evident that 
the superior souls of the martyrs and saints did not consume that 
portion of their existence in silent and inglorious sleep. The enlarge- 
ment of their intellectual faculties must have surpassed the measure 
of the human imagination, since it was proved by experience that 
they were capable of hearing and understanding the various petitions 
of their almost innumerable votaries, who at the same moment of 
time, and in the most distant parts of the world, invoked their names 
and their assistance. The confidence of the petitioners appears to 



92 CREATOR AKD COSMOS J OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

have been founded on the persuasion that the saints that reigned 
with Christ, cast an eye of pity upon the earth ; that they were 
warmly interested in the welfare of the Catholic Church, and that 
the individuals who imitated their pious and faithful examples, were 
the peculiar and favorite objects of their tender regard. Sometimes 
indeed their friendship might be influenced by considerations of a 
less exalted kind ; they viewed with partial affection the places which 
had been consecrated by their birth, their residence, their death, their 
burial, or the possession of their relics. The meaner passions of pride, 
avarice and revenge might be deemed unworthy of a celestial breast, 
yet the celestial saints themselves condescended to testify their 
grateful approbation of the liberality of their votaries : and the 
sharpest bolts of punishment were hurled against those impious 
wretches who violated their magnificent shrines, or discredited their 
supernatural poAver. Atrocious indeed would have been the guilt, 
and strange the scepticism of those men, if they had obstinately re- 
sisted the proof of a divine agency, while the elements, the whole 
range of animal creation, and even the secret and subtile operations 
of the human mind, were compelled to obey. 

At Minorca, it was said, the relics of St. Stephen converted in 
eight days 545 Jews, with the help, indeed, of some seasonable severi- 
ties, such as burning their synagogue, driving the obstinate infidels to 
stand amongst the rocks, &c. The immediate and almost instantaneous 
effects which were supposed to follow the prayer, or the offence, 
satisfied the Christians of the ample measure of favor and authority 
which the saints enjoyed in the presence of the Supreme Deity ; and 
it seemed almost superfluous to enquire whether they were continu- 
ally obliged to intercede before the throne of grace ; or whether 
they were not permitted to exercise, according to the dictates of 
their justice and benevolence, the delegated power of their subordi- 
ate deityship. The imagination, which Was raised only by a painful 
effort to the contemplation and worship of the Infinite Deity, eagerly 
embraced such inferior objects of adoration as were more proportion 
ed to its gross preception and imperfect faculties. 

The sublime and simple doctrine of the primitive Christians was 
gradually corrupted, and the hierarchy of heaven, already clouded 
with metaphysical subtilties, which put out of the question the con- 
sideration of the supreme and only God, was degraded by the in- 
troduction of a popular mythology which effectually restored the 
reign of Polytheism. As the objects of religion were gradually re- 
duced to the standard of the imagination, those rites and ceremonies 
were introduced which seemed to most powerfully affect the senses of 
the vulgar. If in the beginning of the fifth century Origen or Cy- 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 93 

prian had been raised from the dead to assist at the festival of some 
popular saint or martyr they would have gazed with astonishment 
and indignation on the profane spectacle, which had succeeded to 
the pure and spiritual worship of a primitive Christian congregation. 
As soon as the doors of the church were thrown open they must have 
been offended with the smoke of incense, the various perfumes of 
flowers, and the glimmer of lamps and tapers, which diffused at noon- 
day a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their opinion, a sacrilegious light. 
If they should approach the balustrade of the altar they must make 
their way through a prostrate crowd, consisting for the most part of 
strangers or pilgrims, who resorted to the city on the vigil of the 
feast; and who already felt the strong intoxication of fanaticism, 
perhaps some of wine. They devoutly imprinted their kisses on the 
pavements and walls of the sacred edifices, and they directed their 
frequent prayers to the bones, the blood, or the ashes of the saint, 
which were usually concealed by a linen or silken veil from the eyes 
of the votaries. 

The Christians frequented the tombs of the martyrs in the hope 
of obtaining from their effectual intercession every sort of spiritual, 
but more especially of temporal blessings. They implored the pre 
servation of their health or the cure of their infirmities, the fruitful- 
ness of their barren wives, or the safety and happiness of their chil- 
dren. Whenever they were about to undertake any distant or dan- 
gerous journey they implored the holy martyrs to be their guides 
and protectors on the road ; and if they returned without having 
experienced any misfortune they again hastened to the tombs of the 
martyrs to express with grateful thanksgivings their obligations 
to their celestial patrons. 

The walls of the temples were hung around with symbols of the 
favors which they had received ; eyes, and hands and feet of gold 
and silver, and edifying pictures, which could not long escape the 
abuse of indiscreet and idolatrous devotion represented the image, 
the attributes, and the miracles of the tutelar saint. The same uni- 
form spirit of superstition and idolatiy might suggest in the most 
distant ages and countries the same methods of affecting the sense, 
and of deceiving the credulity of mankind ; but it is clearly seen, 
and must be confessed, that the priesthood of the Catholic Church 
imitated the model of the superstition which they were impatient to 
destroy ; and some may incline to believe that they substituted a 
worse system of superstition instead of Pagan Polytheism. In their 
destruction of Paganism the bishops persuaded themselves that the 
ignorant rustics would more readily renounce the superstitions of 
Paganism if the} r found some resemblance, some compensation in the 



94 CREATOR A>7D COSMOS; OR, COSMO THEOLOGIES, ETC. 

bosom of Christianity. The religion of Constantine achieved in less 
than a century the final conquest of the Roman Empire; but the 
victors themselves insensibly adopted the arts and practices of their 
vanquished rivals. Here we find, even in this transition state from 
Paganism to Christianity, how easily men glide into idolatry ; how 
insensibly they are overcome by those arts and practices which they 
condemn in others ; how that, engrossed with carnal ideas, the 
Christian priesthood allowed the worship of saints, relics, and images 
to corrupt the pure and simple primitive Christian model. The bish- 
ops of that day persuaded themselves that the Pagans would more 
willingly renounce Polytheism and embrace Christianity, if they 
found in it something compensatory for the old religious rites and 
ceremonies to which they had been accustomed, just as if one form 
of idolatry were any better than another ; and the Reformers of 
eleven centuries after, possessed with the same idea, made the same 
mistake in retaining many of the man-made doctrines of the old 
Catholic Church. 

But to proceed with the prophecy in ch. XIIL. verse 3, is : 
" And I saw one of his heads, as it were, wounded (lit. slain) to 
death : and his deadly wound was healed : and all the world won- 
dered after (lit. behind) the beast.*' The seer in his vision saw this 
wounded head as a very remarkable appearance. It here refers to 
the city of Rome, wounded and trodden down by war. and the adja- 
cei.t country of Italy which was subjected to the same ravages of 
war as the city; and this head represented in resources and impor- 
tance one-seventh of the Roman Empire. Rome was on several oc- 
ccasions during the decline of the Empire taken and sacked by the 
barbarians ; as by Alaric, king of the Gottis, in the year 410 A. D. ; 
by Genseric, king of the Vandals, in 455 A. D. ; by Anthemius and 
Ricimer in 472 A. D., and by Odoacer. a Gothic king who governed 
Rome and Italy from the year 476-490 A. D. ; and by the Goths 
and Romans it was repeatedly taken and retaken till the year 552 
A. D. But the deadly wound was healed in a degree by the re-con- 
quest of Rome by Xarses, the General of the Emperor Justinian, 
after which, for a period of about two centuries, Rome, with the 
adjacent provinces, was governed by an officer called Exarch, who 
resided at Ravenna and governed as the lieutenant of the Emperor, 
at Constantinople. These Exarchs, of whom there were eighteen 
successive ones, were invested with civil, military, and even ecclesi- 
astical power. Their immediate jurisdiction, which was afterwards 
given to the Pope, extended over the modern Romagna, or the 
States of the Church, the marshes or valleys of Ferrara and Com- 
machio, five maritime cities from Rimini to Ancona, and a second 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 95 

inland Pentapolis, between the Adriatic coast and the Appennines. 
Also three subordinate provinces of Rome, Venice, and Naples, 
which were separated by hostile lands from the palace of Ravenna, 
acknowledged, both in peace and war, the supremacy of the Exarch. 
But this deadly wound came to be completely healed by the con- 
quests of Rome and Italy, 754-800, by Pepin and Charlemagne, 
kings of France, who donated to the bishop of Rome the patrimony 
over which he has ruled, as a temporal as well as an ecclesiastical 
prince, till within our own time. Thus that part of his dominions 
seemed to have been taken clearly away from the Roman Emperor 
who resided at Constantinople, and to have become the independent 
kingdom of the Pope, supported by the kings of France, and after- 
wards by the Emperors of Germany. But although this was so in 
effect yet the Emperors who reigned at Constantinople never gave 
up their claim to those dominions which were formerly governed by 
the Exarch, now by the Pope, but always reckoned them as their 
lawful right. " And all the world wondered after the beast." The 
word dru(ja>, here translated " after," literally signifies " behind " or 
" backwards," so that it reads " all the world wondered behind 
the beast," and it means that the attention of mankind would be 
attracted in another direction, and towards some other wonderful 
object than the proper seat of government, and the proper supreme 
head of the Empire. The Popes of Rome waxed very great in the 
four centuries which intervened since the reign of Constantine, 
through the influence which their peculiar position and circumstan- 
ces gave to them ; and they were now waxed doubly great and 
strong, through the liberality and assistance of the Western poten- 
tates. The Emperor thus effectually lost not only part of his jurisdic- 
tion, but a good share of the homage and admiration which accrued to 
him from mankind ; and while the power and influence of the Pope 
henceforth constantly increased, that of the Emperor as constantly 
decreased, until at length the Latin Crusaders took Constantinople 
itself, and Latins ruled it for somewhat over fifty years, 1204-1261, 
wken it was again taken by the Emperors of the Eastern Roman 
line, who reigned over it till it was finally captuned by the Turks in 
1453. 

Verse 4. " And they worshipped the dragon which gave power 
to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying : Who is like to 
the beast ? Who is able to make war with him ? " The prophet in 
his vision takes in ages at a glance. The Spirit of God sees the 
past, present, and future as present. Here they are seen worshipping 
the dragon, or the government and religion of the old Pagan Roman 
Empire, and the beast, or the government and religion of the Chris- 



96 CEEATOE AXD COSMOS; OE, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

tian Roman Empire ; but the dragonic power is evidently passed 
away ; for their acclamations are all in praise of the beastly power. 
But in a sense these two powers were adored together. The Pagan 
Roman Emperors received from their subjects divine homage. On 
state occasions the Emperor sat on his throne, surrounded by the 
busts and images of the Emperors that had preceded him ; and the 
principal subjects of the Empire were accustomed to present them- 
selves before him in the attitude of worship, and so adore not only 
the living Emperor, but the busts and statues of all the dead ones 
which were then on exhibition. The same worship was given to the 
Christian Roman Emperors, and the mode and manner of this wor- 
ship was brought to a more blasphemous refinement than ever be- 
fore by the Pagan Diocletian, the immediate predecessor of Constan- 
tine, who introduced the court ceremonial of Eastern kings into the 
court of the Emperors ; and so it continued, but still waxing worse, 
during the reign of the Christian Emperors. Of course the vulgar 
multitude could only worship the Emperor at a distance, with their 
reverential exclamations : ""Who is like unto him ! Who is able to 
make war with him ! " When the crusaders were passing Constan- 
tinople on their first expedition the generals and officers were de- 
tained and compelled to do homage to the Emperor Alexius, he 
thereby showing them that he still considered the Western provin- 
cials as his liege subjects. High on his throne the Emperor sat mute 
and immoveable : His Majesty was adored by the Latin princes, 
dukes, and counts ; and they submitted to kiss either his feet or his 
knees, an indignity which their own writers are ashamed to confess, 
and unable to deny. In about a century after, however, when the 
crusaders were passing on their fourth expedition they took the city 
and held it for a time, the Emperors going into exile, as we have 
mentioned. It has always been considered a privilege by the Catho- 
lics to be allowed the rare honor of kissing the Pope's toe. " Who 
is like unto the beast ? Who is able to make war with him ? " This 
last expression shows that the secular power of the Romans, or the 
Emperors who comprised in their person both the sacred and secular 
branches of power, is principally meant. This great combination of 
sacred and secular power, — the sacred, which, as the vicegerency of 
God on earth, claimed all spiritual power over the souls and bodies 
of men ; the secular power of the Romans, which claimed to have won 
universal Empire by the force of its arms, — might well be an object 
of astonishment to the vulgar multitude, and cause the watching 
nations to cry : " Who is able to make war with it ? " Verse 5 ; 
44 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and 
blasphemies : and power was given unto him to continue (lit., to do 



CHUBCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 97 

or make, (noirjaaC) forty-two months." It is not said by whom this 
mouth was given, as it was said that the dragon gave him his power, 
his throne and great authority. It symbolizes principally the eccle- 
siastical or spiritual force of the Empire, that is, of the Catholic 
Church. The mouth here given evidently means the same with that 
mentioned in Daniel, ch. VII. ver. 8, where it is said that in the 
little horn were eyes like the eyes of man (not only of a man) and a 
mouth speaking great things. The mouth, as the eyes, pertains not 
to an individual man alone, but to the whole power which it sym- 
bolizes. Thus, though the spiritual power was represented especially 
in the Emperor as the supreme head of the Catholic Church ; and 
though it was recognized in the Pope more than in any other indi- 
vidual bishop of that church, yet the symbol does not refer to these 
two, or to either one of them exclusively, but to the whole Catholic 
hierarchy. The reference in Dan. XI. 36, &c, appears to have in 
view the whole Roman power in its various characters. 

" Speaking great things and blasphemies." Doubtless these 
" great things " mean the same as, and much more than that expres- 
sion in the New Testament " great swelling words of vanity," which 
are spoken by men puffed up with pride, actuated by arrogance and 
ambition, and filled with carnal ideas, following the lust of the flesh 
and of their own perverse hearts, strangers to God and to all godli- 
ness, and therefore enemies of themselves and of their species. Blas- 
phemy means, generally, impiety against God. This takes place in 
various ways, as for example, by detracting from the Deity the honors 
which belong to him: the setting up and worship of other gods or 
idols besides the true and only God, the invisible and infinite Deity ; 
the assuming and arrogating of men to themselves the honors and 
prerogatives which belong only to Deity. When men give to idols, 
or false gods, or deified human beings any divine honors, they 
detract from the true God what properly belongs to him, just as 
they do when they neglect to perform the important duties which 
they owe to him. When men allow or require themselves to be 
worshipped by their fellow human beings, as did the Christian 
Roman Emperors, the Popes, and as do modern Christian princes, 
they assume and arrogate to themselves the honors which belong 
only to God. It may be truly said that the Christian Emperors 
did exalt themselves above all that is called God. And the Popes 
either permitted or compelled themselves to be exalted to such a 
high pitch of divinity as they have been, even higher than anything 
that is known to have been called God. The truly godly man is 
the most truly humble. Men commit blasphemy when they permit 
or require themselves to be called b} 7 any of the titles which are 



98 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

appropriated to the Supreme God. But the blasphemies here re- 
ferred to principally doubtless referred to other things as well as 
man's arrogances and assumptions. The Greek and Latin branches 
of the cnurch have long paid worshipful attention to the images 
and relics of the saints. Both these as well as the Reformed 
Churches worship the Trinity, which in the metaphysical way 
wherein it has been set forth by Athanasius and his school, and 
as it stands now in some creeds is either a non-reality or an un- 
necessary dogma. "If we understand what prayer is," says 
Origen, a learned Christian writer of primitive times, " it will appear 
that it is never to be offered to any originated being, not to Christ 
himself, but only to the God and Father of all, to whom our Saviour 
himself prayed and taught us to pray." And in a book of prayers 
which is used in one of the Protestant Churches it goes on thus : 
" O God, the Father of heaven, have mercy upon us, miserable sin- 
ners ; O God, the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy upon us, 
miserable sinners ; O God, the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the 
Father and the Son, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners ; O holy, 
blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, have mercy 
upon us miserable sinners. Nobody, who intelligently prays this 
prayer, can understand the foregoing as merely a Trinity 
of names; for it says in its peroration: O Holy, blessed 
and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, have mercy 
upon us miserable sinners. God is one person, but incom- 
prehensible, and if he be represented, by more than one it is clear 
they must be creations, if entities.* In the Council of Nice held 
in 325 A.D., the equal Deity of the Son with the Father was 
decreed: in that of Constantinople, held in 381, A. D., the equal 
Deity of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son was decreed ; 
in that of Chalcedon, held in 451, it was decreed that in Christ there 
were two natures, perfect God and perfect man ; and thus the suc- 
cessive Councils held from time to time have added to the number 
of the celestial hierarchy of the Christian Church, which deities all 
subsisted merely in the imagination that created or creates them. 

" And power was given him to continue forty-two months." In 
the language of prophecy a day is usually put for a year, and thus 
reckoning thirty days for each month, that is, three hundred and 
sixty days for a prophetic year, this power was to continue for twelve 
hundred and sixty years. And if we reckon from the Reformation 



* The worship of the Trinity of 
the creeds is the worship of some complex idea which nobody can understand, but which each 
one tries to have some sort of conception of. Tor believers in their worship of God to ,seek 
his favor and Holy Spirit in the name and through the sacrificial mediation of Jesus, in their 
behalf, is proper and withal a simple worship. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 99 

begun by Constantine in the fourth century to the Protestant Re- 
formation in the sixteenth century, reckoning from and to the mean 
times in which these Reformations were effected, we shall find that 
this period of time coincides. (See Rev. ch. XI. 2, 3, and ch. XII., 
6 also, for the time.) In the continuation of our prophecy, verse 6 
reads : " And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to 
blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in 
heaven." This he does by means of the " mouth " that was given 
him, by the Catholic hierarchy, especially in the persons of the Em- 
perors and Popes, arrogantly claiming to itself the honors which 
belong to God alone, by its arbitrarily assuming the right of con- 
trolling the conscience and reason of all mankind, as well as of being 
the arbiter of their eternal destinies, by which it extended its power 
as far as the fears of its ignorant and superstitious votaries ; by its 
undue use of the instrument of excommunication, and anathematiz- 
ing, cursing by " bell, book and candle-light," &c, especially in the 
case of the multitudes of heretics and nonconformists, which were 
in all the orthodox Christian ages condemned to temporal and eternal 
misery by the exercise of this power. This hierarchy beyond all 
doubt blasphemed the name of God and his tabernacle, that is, his 
true church, here his true and humble and persecuted ones ; and 
them that dwell in heaven, that is, true worshippers of God, the truly 
godly people, wherever they were found within the jurisdiction of 
the Catholic hierarchy. The tabernacle was a movable temple of the 
Hebrews in the days of their wanderings in the wilderness ; so here 
the tabernacle means the true Church of God on earth ; and those 
who dwell in it, or his true and faithful people, wherever they are, 
and however difficult to be recognized among mankind, are said to 
dwell in heaven. See Hebrews VIII. 2, and IX. ; Rev. XV. 5. In 
general throughout the book of Revelation wherever the word hea- 
ven is used it means the Church of God on earth. And thus when 
in verse 7 of chapter XII. of the Book of Revelation, it is said that 
there was war in heaven, it means, not that there was war away 
above the clouds in realms unknown and unexplorable by us ; but 
that there was a spiritual contest of the Church in the world, with 
the world, and with all the powers and contrivances of the spiritual 
adversary, as in the contest of the primitive Church with polytheism 
which resulted in -a reformation of the old system under Constantino 
and his successors, and to which this heavenly war refers; as well as 
to the war waged by the witnesses for the truth in all the ages after- 
wards against Catholic polytheism and idolatry. The prophecy does 
not say how long or how short that contest in heaven would last ; 
the language simply informs us that such a contest would take plaoe 



100 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OE, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and what its results should be. But we know that spiritual contest 
began with Christianity, and is going on ever since ; Michael and 
bis angels, the Spirit of God, fighting against the dragon, the spirit 
of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and prevailing over them. 
Paul, in his epistles, explains the kingdom of heaven to be righteous- 
ness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, (Romans ch. XIV., ver. 
IT.) and this belongs to one as to many, and to many as to one. Ver. 
7 : " And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to 
overcome them ; and power was given him over all kindreds and 
tongues and nations." This making war with the saints, and over- 
coming them, has reference to the great power of the Empire, which 
was always exercised in compelling conformity to the orthodox doc- 
trines of the Catholic Church, which were universally established 
therein by law. The Emperor, the supreme head of the Church, 
and of course the bishop of Rome, were always considered as the 
pillars and supporters of rigid orthodox}", and the reference in this 
verse is especially to the Catholic hierarchy using the secular power 
of the Empire in compelling submission to the established faith. And 
power was given him, literally over " every tribe, and people, and 
tongue." This certainly is all-inclusive language, and it has reference 
to the Roman Empire considered as the world, which throughout the 
New Testament is spoken of as such. The orthodox doctrines of 
the Catholic Church were established in every portion of the Empire 
from the Caledonian ranrpart to the frontiers of Persia, and from 
Mount Atlas in Africa to the frontiers of Scythia and Germany ; so 
that heretics and nonconformists had no place to go if not beyond 
the frontiers of the Empire, from the arm of persecution and com- 
pulsion. And even Caledonia, Scythia, Germany, and other nations 
which lay outside of the Empire proper, were afterwards brought to 
a profession of the orthodox faith through the labors of the mission- 
aries of the Catholic Church ; missionaries who were often accom- 
panied by an army of soldiers or dragoons, and enforced their tenets 
by the sword. A religious society sprung up in the Eastern Roman 
Empire in the latter part of the seventh century, called the Pauli- 
cians, which is thus described by Gibbon the historian : " The name 
of Paulicians is derived by their enemies from some unknown and 
domestic teacher: but I am confident that they gloried in their af- 
finity to the apostle of the Gentiles."—" The Paulician teachers 
were distinguished only by their Scriptural names, by the modest 
title of fellow-pilgrims, by the austerity of their lives, their zeal or 
knowledge, and the credit of some extraordinary gifts of the Holy 
Spirit. But they were incapable of desiring, or at least of obtaining 
the wealth and honors of the Catholic prelacy ; such anti-Christian 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 101 

pride they bitterly censured ; and even the rank of elders or presby- 
ters was condemned as an institution of the Jewish Synagogue." 

In their persecution by the Roman Emperors the historian says : 
" After a mission of twenty-seven years Sylvanus (this was the prin- 
cipal founder of their society) who had retired from the tolerating 
government of the Arabs, fell a sacrifice to the Roman persecution. 
The laws of the pious Emperors, which seldom touched the lives of 
less odious heretics, proscribed without mercy or disguise the ten- 
ets, the books and the persons of the Motanists and the Manichaeans ; 
the books were delivered to the flames ; and all who should presume 
to secrete such writings, or to profess such opinions, were devoted 
to an ignominious death. A Greek minister, armed with legal and 
military powers, appeared at Colonia to strike the shepherd, and to 
reclaim, if possible, the lost sheep. By a refinement of cruelty Sim- 
eon placed the unfortunate Sylvanus before a line of his disciples, 
who were commanded, as the price of their pardon and the proof of 
their repentance, to massacre their spiritual father. They turned 
aside from the impious office ; the stones dropped from their filial 
hands ; and of the whole number only one executioner could be 
found, a new David, as he is styled by the Catholics, who boldly 
overthrew the giant of heresy. This apostate, Justus was the name, 
again deceived and betrayed the unsuspecting brethren : and a new 
conformity to the acts of St. Paul may be found in the conversion of 
Simeon ; like the apostles he embraced the doctrines he had been sent 
to persecute, renounced his honors and fortunes, and acquired among 
the Paulicians the fame of a missionary and a martyr. They were 
not ambitious of martyrdom, but in a calamitous period of one hun- 
dred and fifty years their patience sustained whatever zeal could in- 
flict ; and power was insufficient to eradicate the obstinate vegeta- 
tion of fanaticism and reason. From the blood and ashes of their 
first teachers a succession of teachers and congregations repeatedly 
arose."- — " The feeble Michael the first, the rigid Leo, the Armenian, 
were foremost in the race of persecution ; but the prize must doubt- 
less be adjudged to the sanguinary devotion of Theodora, who re- 
stored the images to the Oriental Church. Her inquisitors explored 
the cities and mountains of the lesser Asia, and the flatterers of the 
Empress have affirmed that in a short reign one hundred thousand 
Paulicians were extirpated by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames."* 

Great numbers of the Vandals, Suevi, Goths and Burgungians 
are said to have embraced Christianity of their own accord in the 
fifth century. But from what follows it is not difficult to sec what 



* Milman's Gibbon's Rome, Ch. LIV. 



102 CEEATOR AXD COSHOS ; OK, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

it was that they embraced. Mosheim says : " All these fierce and 
warlike nations judged a religion excellent in proportion to the suc- 
cess that crowned the arms of those who professed it, and esteemed 
consequently that doctrine the best whose professors had gained the 
greatest number of victories. When therefore they saw the Romans 
possessed of an Empire much more extensive than that of any other 
people, they concluded that Christ, their God, was of all others the 
most worthy of religious homage." * Clovis, king of the Franks, was 
at this period the most famous trophy of their Catholic grace. " His 
conversion to the Christian religion is dated from the battle he fought 
with the Alemans in the year 496, in which, when the Franks began 
to give ground, and their affairs seemed desperate, he implored the 
assistance of Christ, and solemnly engaged himself by a vow to wor- 
ship him as his God if he rendered him victorious over his enemies." 
Victory ensued. Clovis was the same year baptized at Rheims with 
three thousand of his subjects who followed his example. It is said 
that Remigius, bishop of Rheims, having preached to Clovis, and 
those who had been baptized with him, a sermon on the sufferings 
and death of Jesus, the king on hearing him cried out : " If I had been 
there with my Franks that should not have happened."' f This may 
serve as a specimen to show the spirit that animated these ignorant 
and barbarous converts, as well as their misunderstanding of Christ 
and his harmless religion. But this is not all ; wonderful miracles 
are said to have been wrought at the baptism of this first Christian 
king of France, which lying tales, Mosheim observes, " are utterly 
unworthy of credit." He further adds that " pious frauds were very 
commonly practised in Gaul and Spain at this time in order to cap- 
tivate the minds of a rude and barbarous people, who were scarcely 
susceptible of a rational conviction." " The impudence of imposters 
in contriving false miracles was artfully proportioned to the creduli- 
ty of the vulgar ; while the sagacious and the wise, who perceived 
these cheats, were obliged to silence, by the dangers which threat- 
ened their lives and fortunes if they detected the artifice. The pru- 
dent are silent, the multitude believe, and impostors triumph." 

In the sixth century the conversion of several barbarous nations 
is dated ; among whom were the Abasgi, the Heruli, the Alans, the 
Lazi, and Zani. " These conversions," says Mosheim, " however 
pompously they may sound, were extremely superficial. All that 
was required of these darkened nations amounted to an oral profes- 
sion of their faith in Christ, to their abstaining from sacrifice to the 
gods, and their committing to memory certain forms of doctrine ; so 



* Mosheim' s Ecclesiastical History, Century V t Id. Cent. V. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 103 

that even after their conversion to Christianity they retained their 
primitive ferocity and savage manners, and continued to distinguish 
themselves by the most horrid acts of cruelty and rapine, and the 
practice of all sorts of wickedness." * It Avould appear that where 
such a religion as this is called Christianity, and such savage and 
cruel and rapacious wretches are called Christians, the meek, mild 
and self-denying followers of Jesus ought to have some other name ; 
rather call them heretics, fanatics, wild enthusiasts, or persons disor- 
dered in their brains. 

In the sixth century also, a vast multitude of Jews were convert- 
ed to Christianity, and added to the Church. " Many," says Mos- 
heim, 4 * were brought over to the truth by the persuasion and in- 
fluence of the Emperor Justinian." " It must, however, be acknow- 
ledged," says he, ^ that these conversions were owing to the libera- 
lity of the Christian princes or to the fear of punishment, rather 
than to the force of argument or the love of truth. In Gaul the 
Jews were compelled by Childeric to receive the ordinance of bap- 
tism, and the same despotic method of converting was practised in 
Spain." These Jews, therefore, must have found themselves in 
error still worse than the first. 

About the same time the Catholic Gospel was propagated in Bri- 
tain among the Anglo-Saxons, and the Caledonian tribes : and also in 
Germany among the Bohemians, Thuringians, and Boii. But it must 
be confessed, even by Mosheim, " that the converted nations now 
mentioned retained a great part of their former impiety, superstition, 
and licentiousness ; and that, attached to Christ by a mere outward 
and nominal profession, they in effect renounced the purity of his 
doctrine, and the authority of his Gospel by their flagitious lives, 
and the superstitious and idolatrous rites and institutions which 
they continued to observe." Thus, these barbarous nations, through 
the despotic power of their more barbarous conquerors, are compel- 
led to make a mere outward or nominal profession of Christianity, 
without amending their lives or quitting their former idolatrous 
practices. 

Pope Gregory, called the Great, sent into Britain, in the year 
596, A. D., forty Benedictine monks, with Augustin at their head. 
This monk Augustin, on account of his labors in propagating the 
Catholic Gospel in Britain, is styled the British Apostle, and was 
the first Archbishop of Canterbury. After his arrival in England ho 
converted the heathen temples into places of Christian worship ; and 
Gregory, in his epistle to the Anglo-Saxon converts, permits them 

t Id. Cent. VI. 



104 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

to sacrifice in honor of the saints on their respective holidays the 
victims which they had formerly offered to the gods. 

The same account of the celestial light and the divine Gospel runs 
through the seventh century, and St. Columban, St. Gal, and St. 
Kilian, and other great saints are said to convert Franks, Frieslan- 
ders, and other nations to the religion of Jesus. But again Mosheim 
confesses with respect to these gospelizers that " many of them dis- 
covered in the course of their ministry the most turbulent passions, 
arrogance and ambition, avarice and cruelty. And instead of gain- 
ing souls to Christ they usurped a despotic dominion over their ob- 
sequious proselytes ; and exercised a princely authority over the 
countries where their ministry had been successful." " The conver- 
sion of the Jews seemed at a stand in this century, though in many 
places they were barbarously compelled by the Christians (rather 
anti-Christians,) to make an outward and feigned profession of their 
faith in Christ." * 

The Emperor Heraclius, incensed against that miserable people 
by the insinuations, as it is said, of the ecclesiastics, persecuted them 
in a cruel manner, and ordered multitudes of them to be inhumanly 
dragged into the Christian Churches in order to be baptized by com- 
pulsion. The same odious method of converting was practised in 
Spain and Gaul. 

In the eighth century, Boniface, on account of his missionary 
labors and holy exploits, was distinguished by the honorable title of 
the Apostle of the Germans. But notwithstanding the eminent 
services he is said to have rendered to Christianity, Mosheim con- 
fesses that he " often employed violence and terror, and sometimes 
artifice and fraud, in order to multiply the number of Christians," 
It would be too tedious to pursue these Catholic gospelizers through 
all their tyrannical movements. Charlemagne in the same century 
commenced hostilities in behalf of the Church against those Saxons 
who inhabited Germany : " that valiant people," says Mosheim, 
" whose love of liberty was excessive and whose aversion to the 
restraints of sacerdotal authority was inexpressible." Yet this valiant 
people, who had hitherto stood their ground against the fraud and 
violence of monks and bishops, at last, overcome by the fear of pun- 
ishment and the imperious language of victory, suffered themselves 
to be baptized, though with the greatest reluctance. For, according 
to the iniquitous law which these savage gospelizers had enacted, 
" every Saxon who contemptuously refused to receive the sacrament 
of baptism was to be punished with death." f 

Such were the exploits of Charlemagne in the service of Chris- 

* Mosheim' s Ecclesiastical History, Cent. VII. j Id. Cent. Vm. 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE EOxMAN EMPIRE. 105 

tianity, for which " succeeding generations," says Mosheim, " can- 
onized his memory, and turned this bloody warrior into an eminent 
saint." But if Dr. Mosheim truly saw the absurdity of such an im- 
pious turn, how was it possible that he could canonize great num- 
bers of such monstrous characters in his history under the name of 
Christians, and turn their absurd and ridiculous doctrines, with their 
pernicious effects, into the G-ospel of Christ and the benign religion of 
Jesus ? These that we have quoted are only a few example for ill- 
ustration. We shall turn to them again by-and-bye, in illustrating 
chapter XVII. of Revelation. 

Such warfare did the great Catholic Church wage with all to 
whom it came for twelve hundred and sixty years, until it overcame 
them ; so that it could in a sense be said just, before the outbreak of 
the Reformation that it had gotten dominion over all kindreds and 
tongues and nations; and that all who dwelt upon the earth, that is, 
in the now enlarged Roman world, worshipped or succumbed to it, 
all whose names were not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world : see verse 8. It is a com- 
forting thought that in this universal dominion of spiritual despotism, 
superstition, and prostration there were a few who remained as wit- 
nesses for the truth, who amid persecutions, tribulations, affliction and 
death gave their testimony for the truth against error, superstition, and 
idolatry : always a few whose names were written in the Lamb's 
Book of Life. " My Father that gave them Me is greater than all, 
and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. " The 
secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them 
his covenant." The blood of all those who were slain in the coun- 
tries of Europe and western Asia on account of their witness for the 
truth, or against the errors of the Catholic system, during the long 
reign of this Catholic Empire, attests the infallible truth of the pro- 
phecy which we are considering. If it was written in letters of ink 
it was recorded fulfilled by this all-prevailing Power in letters of 
blood. 

Verse 9 : "If any man have an ear, let him hear." The idea to 
be conveyed here is that what was said concerning this beast is es- 
pecially worthy of our attention ; but the proposition being in a 
conditional mood, and the ear symbolising the understanding, indi- 
cates that all would not be able to understand aright concerning it. 
Let men be ever so conversant with history, they will not under- 
stand true prophecy aright except they be imbued with the Bame 
spirit as originally suggested it to the mind of the prophet. Verse 10 : 
" He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that 
killetk with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the 



106 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

patience and the faith of the saints." Literally : He that leadeth 
into captivity goeth into captivity ; but, doubtless, this is a present 
tense with future meaning. No power that we know to have ever 
existed on the earth made so many captives as the Pagan and Chris- 
tian Roman power. No power ever wielded more universal and 
effectual dominion over the bodies and minds of men than the latter 
power did. Captivity of reason and of conscience is the most debas- 
ing kind of servitude ; and this is the very kind of captivity which 
this Catholic system effected during the long period of its ascendency, 
and which it affects to-day where its power and influence prevail. 
But the idea of strict and retributive justice is here contained, and 
it is meant that this captivating power should be taken captive as a 
recompense for its crimes, which was gradually and constantly ful- 
filled in the case of the Roman Empire whose seat was at Constanti- 
nople, which lost its provinces one after another, and on all sides, 
so that at the time of the capture of the city by the Turks in 1453, 
the city was all that remained in the jurisdiction of the Emperor. 
And we see it also gradually and eminently fulfilled in the decline 
of those powers which constituted and supported the bishop of Rome 
as a temporal prince. Austria, a Papal German Empire, becomes 
humbled gradually and loses her power and prestige among the na- 
tions. And France, which has always been a supporter of the bishops 
of Rome, is conquered successively, and has her noblest sons brought 
into captivity by the Anglo-Saxon and German powers, and is de- 
prived of her territories, both colonial and national. The Pope also 
lost his temporal power as an indirect result of the late war between 
Germany and France ; the influence of the Papacy is gradually di- 
minishing, so that to-day there is not one countiy in Europe or in 
the world, which can be said, as it was said all were formerly, to be 
governed civilly and religiously by the influence of the Papacy. 

As the Jewish religion has continued in the world, but in a de- 
clining way, since the introduction of Christianity, even so, doubt- 
less, the influence of the Papacy will continue yet long in the 
world ; but such an influence, being deprived of secular force, as 
can produce no effect if men will not voluntarily yield themselves 
to it; an influence gradually diminishing until it have become al- 
most insensible among mankind and a new and better state have 
arisen in its place. The Greek branch of the Catholic Church, 
with its mediaeval icon-worship, has to a large extent been sup- 
planted long ago by Mahometanism. It still remains the established 
church of Russia, supported by the will and power of the emperor 
its head; and thus it will be likely to remain so long as the present 
system of government remain in Russia, and until some much 
needed change take place there which will cause many doctrines 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN" EMPIRE. 107 

and practices, to be set aside and discarded, to make place for another, 
a simpler, purer, and better religion. It should be a subject of desire, 
and of prayer by all true Christians that God would raise up a good 
man as Emperor of Russia, who, as the present Emperor in enfran- 
chising the national serfs, may enfranchise Russia from that old and 
erroneous system of religion, and substitute and support a better, a 
truer religion in its stead. Many of the Emperors of Russia are com- 
mendable for the good sense they have displayed ; and we hope that 
any of the Emperors into whose hands this book may come will give 
the attention to this subject which its importance deserves. "Here 
is the patience and the faith of the saints," that is, in all the evolu- 
tions and exercises of this beastly power the faith and patience of 
the true servants of God should be severely tried ; tried even to per- 
secution, deprivation, exile, and death. Faith and patience are the 
distinguishing characteristics of the saints in every age and country; 
and nowhere and in no age have their patience and faith been put to 
severer tests than in the Roman Empire during the long period of 
its Church and State domination. 

Few remarkable changes were made in the constitution of the 
Court or Government established at Constantinople, from the days 
of Constantine the First to the capture of the city by the Turks. For 
over a thousand }^ears, from Vespasian to Alexius Comnenus, the 
Caesar was the second person, or at least the second degree, after the 
supreme title of Augustus, was more freely communicated to the 
sons of the reigning monarch. The Emperor Alexius now interposed, 
(about A. D., 1100) a new and supereminent dignity. This title 
was compounded of the names Augustus and Emperor, forming in 
the Greek the high-sounding title of Sebastocrator. He was exalted 
above the Caesar upon the first step of the throne ; the public accla- 
mations repeated his name ; and he was distinguished from the Em- 
peror only by some peculiar ornaments of the head and feet. The 
Emperor alone could assume the purple buskins, and the close dia- 
dem or tiara which imitated the fashion of the Persian Kings. It was 
a high pyramidal cap of cloth or silk, almost concealed by a profu- 
sion of pearls and jewels; the crown was formed by a horizontal 
circle, and two arches of gold ; at the summit or point of their inter- 
section, was placed a globe or cross, and two strings or lappets of 
pearl depended on either cheek. Instead of red, the buskins of the 
Sebastocrator and Caesar were green ; and on their open coronets, or 
crowns, the precious gems were more sparingly distributed. Beside, 
and below the Caesar, Alexius created the titles of Panhypersebastos, 
and the Protosebastos, titles which imply a priority and superiority 
above the simple name of Augustus ; and this sacred and primitive 



108 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

title of the Roman princes was degraded to the kinsmen and servants 
of the Emperor of Constantinople. To their favorite sons and 
brothers, the Emperors imparted the more lofty appellation of Lord, 
or Despot, which was illustrated with new ornaments and preroga- 
tives, and placed immediately after the person of the Emperor him- 
self. The five titles of Despot, Sebastocrator, Caesar, Panhyperse- 
bastos, and Protosebastos, were usually confined to the Emperor's 
own kinsmen, — in modern language, the princes of the blood. Some 
few changes were also gradually introduced into the grade of officers 
pertaining to the palace, the treasury, the fleet and army ; and the 
branches of the civil administration ; old titles, as in the case of 
Augustus, descending in the scale, and newly invented ones being 
placed above them. 

But the most lofty titles, and the most humble postures which 
have been applied to the Supreme Being were prostituted by flattery 
or fear, or compulsion to the Emperors, creatures of the same nature 
as those by whom they were given. The mode of adoration, of fall- 
ing prostrate and kissing the feet of the Emperor, which was first 
borrowed by Diocletian from the court of Persia, was continued and 
aggravated till the last age of the Roman Empire of the East. Ex- 
cepting only on Sundays, when it was waived from a motive of re- 
ligious pride, this humiliating reverence was exacted from all who 
entered the Emperor's presence, from the princes invested with the 
diadem and purple, and from the ambassadors who represented their 
independent sovereigns, the Caliphs of Asia, Egypt, or Spain, the 
Kings of France and Italy, and the Latin Emperors of ancient Rome, 
after these kingdoms and states had been organized from the dis- 
membered provinces of the Empire. It appears, however, that am- 
bassadors occasionally refused to perform the required homage. In 
his transactions of business, Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, had the 
audacity to assert the free spirit of a Frank, and the dignity of his 
master Otho, the newly-created Emperor of the West, about A. D. ? 
1000. Yet his sincerity cannot disguise the abasement of his first 
audience. When he approached the throne the birds of the golden 
tree began to warble their notes, which were accompanied by the 
roarings of two golden lions. With his two companions the ambas- 
sador was compelled to bow and to fall prostrate, and thrice to touch 
the ground with his forehead. He arose, but in the short interval 
the throne had been hoisted from the floor to the ceiling, the figure 
of the Emperor appeared in new and more gorgeous apparel, and the 
interview was concluded in haughty and majestic silence. The 
bishop of Cremona, in his narrative, represents the ceremonies of the 
court of Constantinople. In the morning and evening of each day, 



CHUBCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 109 

the civil and military officers attended their duty in the palace ; 
their labors were repaid by the sight, perhaps by the smile, of their 
lord ; his commands were signified by a nod or a sign ; but all earthly 
greatness stood silent and submissive in his presence. In his regular 
or extraordinary processions through the capital, he unveiled his 
person to the public view ; the rites of policy were connected with 
those of religion, and his visits to the principal churches were regu- 
lated by the calendar of the Greek Church. On the eve of these 
processions, the gracious or devout intention of the monarch was 
proclaimed by the heralds. The streets were cleared and purified ; 
the pavement was strewed with flowers ; the most precious furniture, 
gold and silver plate, and silken hangings were displayed from the 
windows and balconies ; and a severe discipline restrained and si- 
lenced the tumult of the populace. The march was commenced by 
the military officers at the head of their troops ; they were followed 
in long order by the magistrates and ministers of the civil govern- 
ment ; the person of the Emperor was guarded by his eunuchs and 
domestics ; and at the church door he was solemnly received by the 
patriarch and his clergy. The applause did not proceed alone from 
the rude and spontaneous voice of the crowd. The most convenient 
stations were occupied by the bands of the blue and green factions 
of the circus ; and their furious contests, which, in preceding ages 
had shaken the capital, were, in the later ages of the Empire, insen- 
sibly sunk to an emulation of servitude. From either side they 
echoed in responsive melody the praises of the Emperor ; their 
poets and musicians directed the choir ; and long life and victory 
were the burden of every song. The same acclamations were per- 
formed at the hall of audience, the banquet and the church ; and as 
an evidence of boundless sway, they were repeated in the Latin, 
Gothic, Persian, French, and even English languages by the merce- 
naries who sustained the real or fictitious characters of these nations. 

In the palace the Emperor was the first slave of the ceremonies 
which he imposed ; the rigid forms which regulated every word and 
gesture continually besieged him in the palace and in his rural soli- 
tude. But the lives and fortunes of millions depended on his arbi- 
trary will; and the firmest minds, superior to the allurements of 
pleasure and luxury, may be allured by the active pleasures of com- 
manding their equals. The legislative, ecclesiastical, ami executive 
powers were centered in the person of the monarch, and the lust, 
vestiges of the authority of the senate had been finally eradicated by 
the Emperor Leo, surnamed the Philosopher, in the latter part of 
the ninth century. 

In the church of St. Sophia, fho Emperor was solemnly crowned 



110 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

by the Patriarch ; at the foot of the altar the representatives of the 
people pledged their passive and unconditional obedience to his 
government and family. On his side he engaged to abstain as much 
as possible from the capital punishments of death and mutilation ; he 
subscribed with his own hand his Orthodox creed; and he promised 
to obey the decrees of the general Councils and the canons of the 
holy Catholic Church. But his assurance of mercy was vague and 
indefinite: he swore, not to his people, but to an invisible judge; 
and, except in the inexpiable guilt of heresy, the ministers of the 
Church were always prepared to preach the indefeasible right, and to 
absolve the transgressions of their sovereign. The ecclesiastics of 
the Greek Church were themselves the subjects of the civil magis- 
trate ; at the nod of a tyrant the bishops were created, or transferred, 
or deposed, or punished with mutilation or with an ignominious death. 
Whatever might be their wealth and influence they could never suc- 
ceed, perhaps owin.^ to their immediate proximity to their master, in 
the establishing of an independent republic as the Latin clergy ; and 
the Patriarch of Constantinople condemned what he may have se- 
cretly envied, the temporal greatness of his Roman brother. In the 
lapse of centuries a lethargy of servitude had stultified the minds, 
and superstition had rivetted the chains of the Eastern Romans. In 
the wildest tumults of rebellion they never aspired to the idea of a 
free state ; and the private character of the prince appears to have 
been the only source and measure of their public happiness. 

The reigns of many of theRoman Emperors of Constantinople are 
remarkably distinguished by ferocious cruelty and the most diabolical 
crimes. We have already given some idea of the character and ac- 
tions of Constantine the First, and his immediate successors. Our 
space prevents us from giving even the shortest accounts which 
might be given of the character and reign of each successive Emperor 
who reigned at Constantinople for eleven centuries from the death of 
Constantius, the last of the sons of Constantine the First, in 361, 
A.D., to the complete subversion of the Empire by the Turks, in 1453 
in the reign of Constantine the Twelfth. In this long period there 
reigned a great many successive Emperors, about ninety in all, as 
the lives of many of them were cut short by the hand of violence -and 
by various causes. But we think it requisite to give a few examples 
out of many, which might be adduced, which may help to display 
their character. 

Theodosius, under whose reign and auspices the Council of Con- 
stantinople was convened, A.D., 381, in which Council it was decreed 
that the Holy Spirit is equal with the Father and the Son, thus, as Mos- 
heim expresses it, giving the " finishing touch " to the Trinity, caused, 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIEE. HI 

according to the most moderate accounts, seven, but according to other 
respectable authorities, fifteen thousand people to be butchered at 
Thessalonica, because his lieutenant and one or two of the officers of 
his staff had been killed by the rabble of that city. The people of 
Thessalonica were treacherously invited in the name of the Emperor 
to the games of the circus; and such was their desire for those 
amusements that every consideration of fear or suspicion was disre- 
garded by the numerous spectators. As soon as the assembly was 
complete, the soldiers, mostly barbarians, who had secretly been 
posted round the circus, received the signal, not for the races, but of 
a general massacre. The promiscuous carnage contin tied three hours 
without discrimination of strangers or natives, of age or sex, inno- 
cence or guilt. A foreign merchant, who had himself no concern in 
the murder of the officers, offered his own life and all his wealth to 
supply the place of one of his two sons ; but while the father hesitat- 
ed with equal tenderness which he should choose, while he was un- 
willing to condemn either, the soldiers determined his suspense by 
plunging their daggers at the same moment into the breasts of the 
helpless youths. The apology of the executioners, that they were 
obliged to produce the prescribed number of heads, serves only to 
increase by an appearance of design and order the horrors of this 
massacre. The diabolical crime of the Emperor was aggravated by his 
long previous residence at Thessalonica ; (he now resided at Milan, 
whence he transmitted his murderous orders.) The situation of the 
unfortunate city, the dress and faces of its inhabitants were familiar, 
and ever present to his imagination afterwards. 

The emperor Phocas, A. D., 602, who had been formerly a cen- 
turion, on coming to the throne which he usurped, put to death the 
Emperor Maurice, his wife, five sons and three daughters. On the 
approach of Phocas with a large army to the city, Maurice, with his 
wife and family, escaped in a bark to the Asiatic shore, to Chal- 
cedon. Thither the ministers of death were despatched by Phocas : 
they dragged the aged Maurice from his sanctuary ; and his five sons 
were successively murdered before the eyes of their agonised 
parent. At each stroke which he felt in his heart, he found strength 
to repeat a pious ejaculation: "Thou are just, O Lord, and thy 
judgments are righteous;" thereby, it might appear, showing the 
miserable state of abject and servile superstition in which his mind 
Avas. In his last moments, such was the rigid attachment to truth 
of this man, thai he exposed to the soldiers the pious falsehood of a 
nurse who presented her own child instead of a royal infant. The 
tragic scene thus far was closed by the execution of the Emperor 
himself. The bodies of him and 1ms five sons were cast into the sea ; 



112 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OE, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

their heads were exposed at Constantinople to the insults or pity of 
the. multitude ; and it was not till signs of putrefaction had appeared 
that Phocas connived at the interment of these remains. 

The discovery or the suspicion by Phocas of a conspiracy which 
was entered into against his life by the instrumentality of the wife 
of Maurice, caused him to put her and her three daughters also to 
death. A matron who, for her virtue, commanded the respect and 
compassion of mankind, the daughter, wife, and mother of Emperors, 
was tortured like the vilest malefactor to extort a confession of her 
design and associates ; and she, with her three daughters, was be- 
headed at Chalcedon on the same ground which had been stained 
with the blood of her husband and five sons. After such examples, 
it appears superfluous to enumerate the meaner victims of the rage 
and fury of Phocas. Their condemnation was seldom preceded by 
the forms of trial, and their punishment was embittered by the re- 
finements of cruelty; their eyes were pierced, their tongues were 
torn from the roots ; their hands and feet were cut off ; some expired 
under the lash, others in the flames ; others again were transfixed 
with arrows ; and a simple, speed}^ death was a mercy they were 
rarely favored with. The hippodrome, the scene of the pleasures 
and liberties of the Romans, was polluted with heads, and limbs, and 
mangled bodies ; and even the companions of Phocas appeared sensi- 
ble that they could not depend upon his favor or their services to 
protect them from his tyranny. He himself, finally, after suffering 
a variety of insult and torture, had his head severed from his body 
after a reign of ten years, by Heraclius, who came to the throne in 
much the same manner as he did. 

The violence and danger which attended the reigns of the East- 
ern Roman Emperors may be noticed from the fact that in the space 
of six centuries, which intervened between the Emperors Heraclius, 
and the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, there reigned at 
least sixty Emperors, which would leave an average proportion of 
only ten years for the reign of each Emperor. This is far below the 
average length of the reign of monarchs, according to the chronolog- 
ical rule of Sir Isaac Newton, who from the experience of more 
recent and regular monarchies has defined about eighteen or twenty 
years as the term of an ordinary reign. 

The practice of mutilation as a penalty for crime was very fre- 
quent in the Eastern Roman Empire ; the cutting out of the tongue, 
the pulling out of the teeth, the cutting off of the nose, of the feet, 
and hands ; the pricking and putting out of the eyes ; and tortures 
and pains of an astonishing variety were inflicted upon human 
beings. The whole history of this Empire and of the Emperors 



CHUKCH AN T D STATE SYSTEM OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE. 113 

presents generally such a uniformly horrible scene as to thoroughly 
disgust the reader and to send a thrill of horror through his whole 
being. 

Constantine IV, 668-685, had bestowed on his two brothers, 
Heraclius and Tiberius, the title of Augustus, but with no substan- 
tial power. At their secret instigation, the troops of the provin ce 
of Anatolia approached the city on the Asiatic side, demanded for 
the royal brothers the partition or exercise of sovereignty, and sup- 
ported their seditious claims by a theological argument. They were 
Christians, they said, and Orthodox Catholics, the sincere votaries 
of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Since there are three equal 
persons in heaven it is reasonable there should be three equal persons 
on earth. The Emperor invited these divines to a friendly confer- 
ence, in which they might propose their arguments to the senate ; 
they accepted the invitation, but the prospect of their bodies hang- 
ing on a gibbet, in the suburb of G-alata, reconciled their companions 
to the unity of the reign of Constantine. He pardoned his brothers 
and their names were still pronounced in the public acclamations : 
but on the repetition or suspicion of a similar offence, these princes 
were deprived of their titles and noses in the presence of the Catholic 
bishops who were assembled at Constantinople in the sixth general 
council. 

On the death of Constantine IV, the Empire devolved to Jus- 
tinian the Second. His passions were strong, his understanding was 
feeble ; and he was intoxicated with a foolish pride that his birth 
had given him the command of millions, of whom the smallest com- 
munity would not have chosen him for their local magistrate. His 
favorite ministers were two beings belonging to two classes of men 
the least susceptible of human sympathy, a eunuch and a monk ; to 
the one he gave the charge of the palace, to the other the finances : 
the former corrected the Emperor's mother with a scourge ; the other 
suspended the insolvent tributaries with their heads downwards over 
a slow and smoky fire. Justinian enjoyed the sufferings and braved 
the revenge of his subjects for about ten years, till the measure of 
his crimes, and of their patience, was full. A successful revolution 
by Leontius deprived him of his nose, and banished him to Crim 
Tartary, now called the Crimea. He continued ten years in exile, 
and was again restored to his throne by the assistance of a Scythian 
king. In the mean time Leontius had been in his turn dethroned, 
and mutilated, and imprisoned by a usurper who called himself Ti- 
berius. Justinian, on taking possession of the city, had these two 
usurpers dragged into the hippodrome, the one from his palace, the 
other from his prison. Before their execution, Leontius and Tilu-i ins 



114 CREATOR AXT> COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

were cast in chains before the throne of the Emperor : and Justinian 
planting a foot on each of their necks, contemplated about one hour 
the chariot race, while the fickle people shouted in the words of the 
Psalmist : " Thou shalt trample on the asp and the basilisk, and on 
the lion and the dragon shalt thou set thy foot ! " His pleasures 
were inexhaustible in the infliction of tortures : neither private 
virtue nor public service could expiate the guilt of active or even 
passive obedience to a government established in his absence: and 
during the six years of his new reign he considered the axe. the cord 
and the rack as the only instruments of royalty. But his most im- 
placable hatred was directed against the Chersonites. (the inhabi- 
tants of Crini Tartary.) who he believed had insulted him in his ex- 
ile, and violated the laws of hospitality. He imposed a grievous tax 
on Constantinople in order to supply the preparation of a fleet and 
army to invade that distant country. " All are guilty, and all must 
perish." was the mandate of the cruel Justinian, and he entrusted 
the execution of his bloody project to his favorite. Stephen, who 
was known by the epithet of the •• Savage." Yet even the savage 
Stephen imperfectly accomplished the intentions of his sovereign. 
By the time he was ready to attack, the greatest part of the inhabi- 
tants had withdrawn into the countrv. and the minister of vengeance 
contented himself with reducing the youth of both sexes to slavery, 
with roasting alive seven of the principal citizens, with drowning 
twenty in the sea. and reserving forty-two in chains to receive their 
doom from the mouth of the Emperor. On their return the fleet 
was wrecked upon the rocky shores of Anatolia, and Justinian ap- 
plauded the obedience of the Euxine. which had involved in its 
watery bed so many thousands of his subjects and enemies : but the 
tyrant was still insatiate for blood: and despatched a second ex- 
pedition to exterminate the remains of the proscribed colony. In 
the short interval the Chersonites had returned to their city. The 
imperial troops, unwilling and unable to execute the revenge of 
Justinian, escaped his displeasure by abjuring his allegiance : they 
invested Bardanes. under the name of Philippicus. with the purple ; 
and. under the newly-created Emperor, steered back to the harbors 
of Sinope and Constantinople. On their arrival every tongue was 
ready to pronounce, and every hand to execute, the death of the 
tyrant. Destitute of Mends and deserted by his guards, the stroke 
of an assassin ended his life. His son. Tiberius, had taken refuse in 
a church, his aged grandmother guarded the door : and the innocent 
youth, suspending round his neck the most formidable relics, em- 
braced with one hand the altar, with the other the wood of the true 
cross. But the popular fury, deaf to his cries, and trampling on his 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 115 

superstition, put an end to his life. And thus was extinguished the 
race of Heraclius, after a reign of one hundred years. 

The new Emperor was after a very short reign, seized in his pal- 
ace, bound, blinded, and deposed ; another, Anastasius the Second, 
was elevated in his place, who also was soon deposed ; and another, 
Theodosius the Third, also, both of whom submitted to Leo, and 
were permitted to embrace the ecclesiastical profession. The restless 
Anastasius risked and lost his life in treasonable enterprise ; but 
Theodosius died a natural death. The simple word Health, which 
he inscribed on his tomb, attests his confidence of philosophy or re- 
ligion ; and the fame of his miracles was long preserved among the 
people of Ephesus. The ecclesiastical profession was sought and 
obtained by unsuccessful usurpers and deposed Emperors : but its 
acceptance could be considered as only a descent in the scale of 
honor, for the reigning Emperor was always the supreme head of the 
Catholic Church, and the high priest of the nation. 

The reign of Constantine V., 741-775, of thirty-four years, is said 
to have been a long butchery of whatever was holy or innocent or 
noble in the Empire. He assisted in person at the execution of his 
victims, viewed their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged 
without satiating his appetite for blood. A plate of noses was ac- 
ceptable to him as a grateful offering, and his domestics were often 
scourged or mutilated by his own royal hand ; his lust confounded 
the eternal distinction of sex and species, and he seemed to extract 
some unnatural delight from the objects most offensive to human 
sense. Although the annals of those times are considerably obscure, 
owing to the vices which so generally prevailed as almost to extin- 
guish the light of history, yet the numbers of the bishops and monks, 
the generals and magistrates who are said to have suffered under his 
reign, are recorded ; the names were conspicuous, the executions 
were public, the mutilation visible and permanent. 

But with all his inexpressible vices, Constantine V. is represented 
as possessed of some merit. He appeared on horseback in the field 
at the head of the legions ; and although the fortune of his arms 
was various, he triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and 
the Danube, in civil and barbarian war ; and he peopled some of 
the Thracian territories with new colonies. 

Leo IV., 775-780, the son of the Fifth, and the father of the 
Sixth Constantine, was desirous to associate with himself his infant 
son. The royal infant, at the age of five years, was crowned, with 
his mother Irene, and the national consent was ratified by every cir- 
cumstance of pomp and solemnity that could dazzle the eyes or blind 
the conscience of the people. An oath of fidelity was administered 



116 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

in the palace, the church, and the hippodrome to the several or- 
ders of the state, who adjured the holy names of the Son and Mother 
of God : " Be witness, O Christ, that we will watch over Constan- 
tine, the son of Leo ; expose our lives in his service, and bear true 
allegiance to his person and prosperity." They pledged their faith 
on the wood of the true cross, and the act of their agreement was 
deposited on the altar of St. Sophia. The first to swear, and the 
first to violate their oaths were the five sons of Constantine the Fifth 
by a second marriage ; and the story of these princes is singular and 
tragic. The right of primogeniture excluded them from the throne ; 
their elder brother had unjustly defrauded them out of a legacy of 
about ten millions of dollars ; they did not deem some vain titles 
a sufficient compensation for their wealth and for power : and they 
repeatedly conspired against their nephew before and after the death 
of his father. 

Their first attempt was passed over ; for the second offense they 
were condemned to the ecclesiastical state : and for the third, Ni- 
cephorus, the eldest, was deprived of his eyes, and his four brothers 
were punished, as a milder sentence, by the amputation of their 
tongues. After five years confinement they escaped to the church 
of St. Sophia, and displayed a pathetic spectacle to the people. 
" Countrymen and Christians," cried Nicephorus, for himself and 
his tongueless brethren, " behold the sons of your Emperor, if you 
can still recognize our features in this miserable state. A life, an 
imperfect life, is all that the malice of our enemies has spared. It 
is now threatened ; and we now throw ourselves on your compas- 
sion." The presence of a minister checked the rising murmur of the 
people. The princes were taken to the palace, and embarked for 
Athens, where they were finally plunged in darkness and oblivion. 
The young Emperor himself was afterwards blinded by the cruel 
ambition of his mother Irene. Her emissaries assaulted the sleeping 
prince, and stabbed their daggers with such precipitation and violence 
into his eyes as if they meant to execute a mortal sentence. Yet the 
blind son of Irene survived many years, oppressed by the court and 
forgotten by the world. 

To the bloody deed of Irene superstition has attributed a subse- 
quent darkness of seventeen days, during which many vessels in mid- 
day were driven from their course, as if the sun, a fiery globe, so 
vast and so remote, had sympathized with a few atoms of this revolv- 
ing planet. But the Roman world for five years after bowed to the 
government of Irene ; and as she moved through the streets of Con- 
stantinople the reins of her four milk white steeds were held by as 
many patricians, who marched on foot before the golden chariot of 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 1]7 

their Empress. But these patricians were, for the most part, eunuchs ; 
and their base ingratitude justified for them on this occasion the pop- 
ular hatred and contempt. Raised, enriched, and entrusted with 
the first dignities of the Empire, they perfidiously conspired against 
their benefactress ; the great treasurer, Nicephorus, was invested 
with the purple, introduced as her successor into the palace, and 
crowned at St. Sophia by the venal Patriarch. He banished Irene 
to the Isle of Lesbos, where she is said to have earned a scanty sub- 
sistence by her labors with the distaff. Irene was one of those sov- 
ereigns of Constantinople who sustained and favored the worship of 
the images. 

The character of Nicephorus was stained with three odious vices, 
hypocrisy, ingratitude, and avarice ; his want of virtue was not re- 
deemed by any superior talents, nor his want of talents by any pleas- 
ing qualifications. Unskilful and unfortunate in war, he was slain 
by the Bulgarians ; and the advantage of his death overbalanced in 
the public opinion the destruction of a Roman army. 

The famous and unfortunate Bardanes, who was a rebel in the 
time of Nicephorus, had once consulted an Asiatic prophet, who, 
after prognosticating his fall, announced the fortunes of his three 
principal officers, Leo, the Armenian, Michael, the Phrygian, and 
Thomas, the Cappadocian — the successive reigns of the two former, 
the fruitless and fatal enterprise of the third. The prediction was 
verified or produced by the event. Ten years after the crown was 
offered to the same Leo in the Thracian camp, he being the first in 
military rank, and the secret author of the mutiny. As he hesitated 
accepting it, " With this sword," said his companion, Michael, " I 
will open the gates of Constantinople to your imperial sway, or 
instantly plunge it into your bosom, if you obstinately resist the 
just desires of your fellow-soldiers." The compliance of the Armen- 
ian was rewarded with the Empire, and he reigned seven and a 
half years under the name of Leo. V., 813-820. Educated in the 
camp, and ignorant both of laws and letters he introduced into his 
civil government the rigor and cruelty of military discipline ; but if 
his severity was sometimes dangerous to the innocent, it was always 
formidable to the guilty. His religious inconstancy gained for him 
the epithet of Cameleon, but some Catholic writers have acknowl- 
edged that the life of Leo, the Iconoclast (image-breaker) was useful 
to the State. The zeal of his companion, Michael, he repaid with 
riches, honors, and military command ; and his subordinate talents 
were beneficially employed in the public service. Yet the Phrygian 
was dissatisfied with receiving as a favor only a scanty portion of 
the prize which he had bestowed on his equal ; and his discontent, 



118 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

which sometimes evaporated in hasty words, at length assumed a 
more threatening and hostile aspect against a prince whom he repre- 
sented as a cruel tyrant. The tyrant, however, repeatedly detected, 
admonished, and dismissed the old companion of his arms, till fear 
and resentment prevailed over gratitude ; and Michael, after a 
scrutiny into his actions and designs, was convicted of treason and 
sentenced to be burned alive in the furnace of the private baths. 
The devotion of the Empress Theophano was fatal to her husband 
and familv. The twentv-fifth of December had been fixed for the 
execution; she urged that the anniversary of the Saviour's birth 
would be profaned by this inhuman spectacle, and Leo reluctantly 
consented to a respite. But on the vigil of the feast his sleepless 
anxiety prompted him at the dead of night to visit the chamber in 
which his enemy was confined; he perceived him released from his 
chain and stretched on his jailor's bed in a profound slumber. Leo 
was alarmed at these signs of security and intelligence ; but though 
he retired with silent steps, his entrance and exit were noticed by a 
slave who lay concealed in a corner of the prison. Under the pre- 
tence of requesting the aid of a spiritual confessor, Michael informed 
the conspirators that their lives depended on his discretion, and 
that a few hours were left to secure their own safety, and the deliv- 
erance of their friend and country. On the great festivals a chosen 
band of priests and chanters were accustomed to be admitted into 
the palace by a private gate to sing matins in the chapel : and Leo, 
who, as high priest, regulated with the same strictness the discipline 
of the choir and of the camp, was seldom absent from these early 
devotions. In the ecclesiastical habit, but with swords under theii 
robes, the conspirators mingled with the profession, lurked in the 
angles of the chapel, and awaited, as the signal of their onslaught, 
the intonation of the first Psalm by the Emperor himself. The 
imperfect light and the uniformity of dress might possibly have 
favored his escape while they directed their assault against a harm- 
less priest ; but they soon discovered their mistake and encompassed 
upon all sides their royal victim. Without a weapon and without 
a friend, he grasped a weighty cross and stood at bay against the 
hunters for his life ; but as he asked for mercy, " This is the hour, 
not of mercy, but of vengeance," was the inexorable reply. The 
stroke of a sword separated from his body the right arm with the 
cross, and Leo was slain at the foot of the altar. 

A memorable reverse of fortune was exhibited in Michael the 
Second, who, from a defect in his speech, was surnamed the Stam- 
merer. He was snatched from the furnace of fire to the sovereignty 
of the Empire ; and, as at that early hour, and in the tumult a 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN" EMPIRE. 119 

smith could not readily be found, the fetters remained on his legs 
several hours after he was seated on the Imperial throne. The 
blood which had been the price of his elevation was unprofitably 
spent. On the throne he retained the ignoble vices of his origin, 
and Michael lost his provinces with as supine an indifference as if 
they had been the inheritance of his fathers. His title was disputed 
by Thomas, the last of the military triumvirate, who transported 
into Europe eighty thousand barbarians from the banks of the 
Tigris and the shores of the Caspian. He undertook the siege of 
Constantinople, but the city was defended by spiritual and carnal 
weapons. A Bulgarian king was induced to assault the camp of the 
Asiastics, and Thomas had the weakness, or the misfortune, to fall 
alive into the hands of the conquerors. His hands and feet were 
amputated ; he was placed on an ass, and, amid the insults of the 
populace, was led through the streets of the capital, which he 
sprinkled with his blood. The depravity of manners, as savage as 
they were corrupt, is marked by the presence of the Emperor him- 
self at this inhuman spectacle and procession. Deaf to the doleful 
lamentations of his suffering fellow-soldier, he incessantly pressed 
the discovery of more accomplices, till his curiosity was checked by 
the inquiry of an honest or guilty minister : " Would you give 
credit to an enemy against the most faithful of your friends ? " 

The character of Theophilus, the son and successor of Michael, 
was distinguished by the abuse of his arbitrary power. His justice 
was fashioned on the model of the Oriental despots, who, in personal 
and irregular acts of authority, consult the reason or passion of the 
moment, without measuring the sentence by the law, or the penalty 
by the offence. A poor woman threw herself at his feet to complain 
of a powerful neighbor, the brother of the Empress, who had raised 
his palace wall to such an inconvenient height as to exclude her 
humble dwelling from light and air. On the fact being proved, 
instead of granting, like any ordinary judge, sufficient for damages 
to the plaintiff, the Emperor adjudged to her use the palace and the 
ground. Nor was Theophilus content with giving this extraordinary 
satisfaction ; in his zeal he converted a civil trespass into a criminal 
act, and the unfortunate patrician was whipped and scourged in the 
public place of Constantinople. For some slight offences, some 
defects of equity or vigilance, the principal ministers, a prefect, a 
qusestor, a captain of the guards, were banished or mutilated, or 
scalded with boiling pitch, or burned alive in the hippodrome. This 
extraordinary rigor may be thought to have been justified in some 
measure by the consequences ; since, after a scrutiny of seventeen 
days, not a complaint or abuse could be found in the court or city, 



120 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OE, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

intelligence which gratified the pride of the monarch; and it might 
be alleged that the people could be ruled only with a rod of iron, 
and that the public interest is the motive and law of the supreme 
judge. Yet, in the crime, or the suspicion of treason, that judge is, 
of all others, likely to be the most credulous and partial. 

A Persian prince died at Constantinople, leaving an only son. At 
the age of twelve years, the royal birth of Theophobus was revealed, 
and he appeared not unworthy of his birth. He was educated in 
the Byzantine palace, advanced with rapid steps in the career of 
fortune and glory, received in marriage the Emperor's sister, and 
was promoted to the command of thirty thousand Persians, who, 
like his father, had fled from the Mahometan conquerors. These 
troops were desirous of deserting from the Emperor, and erecting 
the standard of their native king, but Theophobus rejected their 
offers, disconcerted their schemes, and escaped from them to the 
camp or palace of his brother-in-law. By a generous confidence, if 
not a sense of gratitude, Theophilus might have secured a faithful 
and able guardian for his wife and infant son, to whom, in the flowei 
of his age, he was about to leave the inheritance of the Empire. 
But his jealousy was exasperated by envy and disease ; he suspected 
and feared the virtues which might either supplant or oppress their 
weakness ; and the dying Emperor demanded the head of the Persian 
prince. With savage delight, he gazed upon the familiar features of 
his brother-in-law and benefactor. " Thou art no longer Theopho- 
bus," he said, and sinking on his couch he added, with a faltering 
voice : " Soon, too soon, I shall be no more Theophilus." His last 
choice entrusted his wife Theodora with the guardianship of the 
Empire, and his son Michael, who was left an orphan in the fifth 
year of his age. 

The restoration of image-worship, and final extirpation of the 
Iconoclasts, has endeared the name of Theodora to the Greek 
Church. After thirteen years of a frugal administration, 829-842, 
she perceived her influence declining : but the second Irene appears 
to have imitated only the virtues of her predecessor. Instead of 
conspiring against the life or government of her son, she retired from 
the throne without a struggle, though not without a murmur, to the 
solitude of private life, deploring the ingratitude, the vices, and the 
inevitable ruin of the worthless youth. 

Among the successors of Nero and Elagabalus, Pagan Emperors, 
we have not yet, in the course of our illustrations of the characters 
of the Christian Emperors, found the imitation of their vices, the 
character of a Roman prince who considered pleasure as the object 
of life, and virtue as the enemy of pleasure. Whatever maternal 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMA.N EMPIRE. 121 

care Theodora might have bestowed upon the youthful education of 
Michael the Third, her unfortunate son considered himself an Em- 
peror before he was a man. If the ambitious mother labored to 
check the progress of his reason, she could not restrain the outbreaks 
of his passion ; and her selfish policy was amply recompensed by the 
contempt and ingratitude of the headstrong youth. At the age of 
eighteen, he rejected the authority of his mother, without feeling 
his own incapacity to govern the Empire himself. With Theodora, 
all gravity and prudence retired from the court. Their places were 
supplied by the alternate dominion of vice and folly, and it was im- 
possible, without forfeiting the public esteem, to acquire or preserve 
the Emperor's favor. The millions of gold and silver which had been 
accumulated for the service of the state he lavished on the vilest of 
men who nattered his passions and shared his pleasures ; and in a 
reign of thirteen years the richest of sovereigns was compelled to 
strip the churches and the palace of their precious furniture. Like 
Nero, he delighted in the amusements of the theatre, and sighed 
when surpassed in the accomplishments in which he should have 
been ashamed to excel. 

Yet the studies of Nero in music and painting indicated some 
symptoms of a liberal taste ; the more ignoble arts of Michael the 
Third were confined to the chariot-race of the hippodrome. The 
four factions, distinguished by their colors, which had long agitated 
the peace, still amused the idleness of the capital. For himself, the 
Emperor assumed the blue livery. The three rival colors were dis- 
tributed to his favorites ; and in the vile, though eager emulation, 
he forgot the dignity of his office and the safety of his dominions. 
He silenced the messenger who presumed to divert his attention by 
announcing to him an invasion in the most critical moment of the 
race ; and by his command the importunate beacons were extin- 
guished which too frequently spread the alarm from Tarsus to Con- 
stantinople. The most skilful characters in the performances of the 
circus obtained the first place in his confidence and esteem. Their 
merit he profusely rewarded. He feasted in their houses and pre- 
sented their children at the baptismal font ; and while he applauded 
his own popularity he affected to blame the cold and stately reserve 
of his predecessors. The strength of Michael was consumed by un- 
natural lusts, love and intemperance. In his midnight revels when 
his passions were inflamed by wine, he was provoked to issue the 
most sanguinary commands: and if any feelings of humanity were 
left, he was induced with the return of sense to approve the salutary 
disobedience of his servants. But a remarkable feature in the 
character of Michael is his profane mockery of the religion of his 



122 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

country. The religion of the Eastern Romans might indeed excite 
the contemptuous smile of a philosopher ; but his smile would have 
been rational and temperate ; and he would have condemned the 
ignorance and folly of a youth who insulted the objects of public 
veneration, even though they were ridiculous. A buffoon of the 
court was invested in the robes of the Patriarch : his twelve me- 
tropolitans, among whom the Emperor ranked himself, assumed their 
ecclesiastical paraphernalia ; they used or abused the sacred vessels 
of the altar ; and in their bacchanalian feast the communion was 
administered in a nauseous compound of vinegar and mustard. Nor 
were these impious spectacles attempted to be concealed from the 
view of the citizens. On the day of a solemn festival the Emperor, 
with his bishops, or buffoons, rode on asses through the streets, en- 
countered the real Patriarch at the head of his clergy ; and by their 
licentious shouts and obscene gestures disordered the gravity of the 
Christian procession. The devotion of Michael appeared only in 
some offence to reason or piety ; he received his theatrical crowns 
from the statue of the Virgin : and he violated an imperial tomb for 
the sake of burning the bones of Constantine the Iconoclast. By 
such extravagant conduct the Emperor became as contemptible as 
he was odious ; every citizen was impatient for the deliverance of 
his country ; and even his favorites were continually apprehensive 
that a caprice might snatch away what a caprice had bestowed. In 
the thirteenth year of his reign, and in the hour of drunkenness and 
sleep, Michael the Third was murdered in his chamber by Basil the 
Macedonian, the founder of a new dynasty, whom the Emperor had 
raised to an equality of rank and power. 

Among the warriors who promoted the elevation of Nicephorus, 
the seventh successor of Basil the Macedonian, and served under his 
standard, was an Armenian, named John Zimisces. The stature of 
Zimisces was below the ordinary standard ; but though diminutive 
in size he was distinguished by strength and beauty as well as by 
great courage and success in war. By the jealousy of the Emperor's 
brother he was degraded from the office of general of the East to 
that of director of the posts, and murmuring, he was chastised with 
degradation and exile. But Zimisces was numbered among the many 
lovers of the Empress Theophano, the wife of Nicephorus. On her 
intercession he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon in the vicinity 
of the capital. Her generosity was repaid in his clandestine and 
amorous visits to the palace : and upon their consultation, Theophano 
consented with alacrity to the death of her unlovely and penurious 
husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her 
private apartments ; in the darkness of a winter's night Zimisces, 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 123 

with his principal companions, embarked in a small boat, crossed the 
Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and silently ascended a ladder 
of ropes which was cast down by the female attendants. Neither his 
own suspicions, nor the warnings of his friends, nor the fortress 
which he had erected in the palace could protect Nicephorus from a 
domestic foe, his wife, at whose command every door was thrown 
open to the assassins. As he slept on a bear-skin on the floor he was 
roused by their noisy intrusion, and thirty daggers glittered before 
his eyes. The murder was protracted by insult and cruelty. Zimisces, 
after ordering the wounded Emperor to be dragged to his feet, and 
heaping insults upon him, to which the suffering man only replied by 
invoking the name of the " Mother of God," with his own hand 
plucked his beard, while his accomplices beat out his teeth with the 
hilts of their swords ; and then trampling him on the floor he drove 
his sword into his skull. As soon as the head of Nicephorus was 
shown from the window, the people consented, and Zimisces was de- 
clared Emperor, 969-976. On the day of his coronation he was con- 
fronted by the Patriarch on the threshold of St. Sophia, who charged 
his conscience with the deed of treason and blood, and required as a 
sign of his repentance that he would separate himself from his more 
criminal associate. This sally of apostolic zeal was nowise offensive 
to the new Emperor, since he could neither love nor trust a woman 
who had repeatedly violated the most sacred obligations ; and Theo- 
phano, instead of sharing the imperial fortune, was dismissed with 
ignominy from his bed and palace. In their last interview she dis- 
played a frantic and impotent rage ; accused the ingratitude of her 
lover; assaulted with words and cuffs her son Basil, as he stood 
silent and submissive in the presence of a superior colleague : and 
avowed her own prostitution in proclaiming the illegality of his 
birth. She was exiled ; her meaner accomplices were punished ; 
and the guilt of Zimisces was forgotten in the splendor of the virtues 
which he displayed. In this age of darkness and degeneracy he fre- 
quently exhibited his valor in conquest upon the banks of the Tigris 
and the Danube, the ancient boundaries of the Roman world. In 
his last return from Syria he observed that the most fruitful lands of 
the new provinces were possessed by the eunuchs. "And is it for 
them," he exclaimed, with honest indignation, "that we have fought 
and conquered ? " This complaint was re-echoed to the palace ; and 
the death of Zimisces is strongly marked with the suspicion of poison 
administered by the eunuchs. 

Andronicus, one of the royal princes, had to go into exile on ac- 
count of his crimes, in order to keep out of the power of the reign- 
ing Emperor, Manuel. The death of the latter, and the minority of 



124 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the Emperor, his son. who was now only twelve or fourteen years 
old. opened the way for the return of Andronicus, 1180-1185. Be- 
fore his return he had held communication with the authorities of 
the city, in which he affected the greatest loyalty to the young Em- 
peror and the Empire. His correspondence with the Patriarch and 
the patricians was aptly seasoned with quotations from the Psalms 
of David and the Epistles of St. Paul, and he patiently waited till 
he was called to her deliverance by the voice of his country. His 
professions of loyalty and religion were taken for the language of 
his heart ; and all opposition giving way before him. he was admit- 
ted to the city as the saviour of the Empire. It was his first care to 
occupy the palace, to salute the Emperor, to confine his mother, to 
punish her minister, and to restore the public order and tranquillity. 
He then visited the tomb of Manuel ; the spectators were ordered to 
stand aloof ; but as he bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, 
or thought they heard, the following murmur of triumph or revenge : 
" I no longer fear thee, mv old enemv, who hast driven me. a va^a- 
bond, to every climate of fhe earth. Thou art safely deposited 
under a seven-fold dome, from whence thou canst never rise till the 
signal of the last trumpet. It is now my turn, and speedily will I 
trample on thy ashes and thy posterity." From his subsequent 
tyranny we may impute such feelings to the man at the moment ; 
but we will not affirm positively that on this occasion he gave an 
articulate sound to his secret thoughts. In the first months of his 
reign his designs were veiled by a specious resemblance of hypocrisy : 
the coronation of Alexius, the young son of Manuel, was performed 
with the usual solemnity ; and his perfidious guardian, holding in 
his hands the symbols of the body and blood of Christ, most fervently 
declared that he lived, and was ready to die, for the service of his 
beloved pupil. But his numerous attendants were instructed to 
maintain that the sinking Empire must perish in the hands of a 
child ; that the Romans could only be saved by a veteran prince, 
bold in arms, skilful in policy, and taught to reign by the long ex- 
perience of fortune and of mankind ; and that it was the duty of 
every citizen to prevail upon Andronicus to undertake the burden 
of the public care. The young Emperor was himself persuaded to 
join his voice to the public acclamations, and to solicit the associatioc 
of a colleague, who, on his elevation, instantly degraded him from 
the supreme rank, secluded his person, and verified the rash declara- 
tion of the Patriarch that Alexius might be considered as dead, as 
soon as he was committed to the custody of his guardian. But his 
death was preceded by the imprisonment and execution of his 
mother. After blackening her reputation and inflaming against her 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 125 

the passions of the multitude, the tyrant accused and tried the Em- 
press for a treasonable correspondence with the King of Hungary. 
His own son, a youth of honor and humanity, expressed his abhor- 
rence of this flagitious act, and three of the judges had the merit of 
preferring their conscience to their safety ; but the obsequious tribu- 
nal, without requiring any proof, or hearing any defence, condemned 
the Empress ; and her unfortunate son was prevailed on to subscribe 
the sentence of her death. The Empress was strangled : her corpse 
was buried in the sea ; and her memory was wounded by the insult, 
most offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of 
her handsome form. The fate of her son was not long deferred ; he 
was strangled with a bow-string ; and the tyrant, insensible to pity 
or remorse, after surveying the dead body of the youthful Emperor, 
struck it rudely with his foot, and exclaimed : " Thy father was a 
knave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a fool ! " The Roman scep- 
tre, the reward of his crimes, was held by Andronicus, for about 
three years and a half, as the guardian or sovereign of the Empire. 
His government displayed a singular contrast of vice and virtue. 
When he gave way to his passions, he was the scourge, when he con- 
sulted his reason, the father of his people. But the ancient proverb, 
that bloodthirsty is the man that returns from banishment to power, 
and which we have seen to be verified in the case of Justinian II. in 
such a remarkable degree, was now again verified in the life of An- 
dronicus. His memory was stored with a black list of the enemies 
and rivals that had traduced his merit, opposed his greatness, or in- 
sulted his misfortune, and, as Justinian, the only comfort of his exile 
was the sacred hope and promise of revenge. The necessary extinc- 
tion of the young Emperor and his mother imposed the fatal obliga- 
tion of extirpating the friends who hated and might punish him, the 
assassin ; and the repetition of murder rendered him less willing 
and less able to forgive. A horrid narrative of the victims whom he 
sacrificed by poison and the sword would be less expressive of his 
cruelty than the appellation of the " halcyon days," which was ap- 
plied to a rare and bloodless week of repose. The tyrant strove to 
transfer on the laws and the judges some portion of his guilt; but 
the mask had fallen, and his subjects could no longer mistake the 
true author of their calamities. The noblest of the citizens, more 
especially those who, by descent or alliance, might dispute the in- 
heritance of the throne, escaped from the monster's den. Nice or 
Prusa, Sicily or Cyprus, were their places of refuge ; and as their 
flight was already criminal, they aggravated their offence, began open 
revolt, and assumed the imperial title. Yet Andronicus resisted the 
dangers and swords of his most formidable enemies. Nice and Pusar 



126 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

he reduced and chastised ; the Sicilians were contented with the pil- 
lage of Thessalonica ; and the distance of Cyprus rendered it no more 
propitious to the rebels than to the tyrant. His throne was subvert- 
ed by a rival without merit, and a people without arms. Isaac An- 
gelus, a descendant in the female line from the Great Alexius, was 
marked as a victim by the prudence or suspicion of the Emperor. 
In a moment of despair, Angelus defended his life and liberty ; slew 
the executioner, and flew to the Church of St. Sophia. The sanct- 
uary was insensibly filled with a curious and mournful crowd, who in 
his fate prognosticated their own. But their lamentations were soon 
turned to curses, and their curses to threats; they dared to ask: 
" Why do we fear ? Why do we obey. We are many, and he is one ; 
our patience is the only bond of our slavery." With the dawn of 
the day the city burst into a general sedition ; the prisons were 
thrown open ; the coldest and most servile were roused to a defense 
of their country, and Isaac, the second of his name, was raised from 
the tomb, or the sanctuary, to the throne. Unconscious of his dan- 
ger the tyrant was absent, withdrawn from the toils of state, in com- 
pany with his wife and mistress, in one of the beautiful islands of the 
Propontis. On the first alarm, he hastened to Constantinople, im- 
patient for the blood of the guilty : but he was astonished by the 
silence of the palace and the tumult of the city, and his general 
desertion by mankind. Andronicus proclaimed a free pardon to his 
subjects ; but they neither desired, nor would grant forgiveness ; he 
offered to resign the crown to his son Manuel , but his son's virtues 
could not expiate his crimes. The sea was still open for his retreat, 
but the news of the revolution had flown along the coast. When 
fear had ceased, obedience was no more , the imperial galley was 
pursued and taken by an armed brigantine ; and the tyrant was 
dragged to the presence of Isaa® Angelus, loaded with fetters, and a 
long chain round his neck. His eloquence, and the tears of his 
female companions pleaded in vain for his life ; but instead of the 
process of a legal execution, the new monarch abandoned him to the 
fury of the numerous sufferers whom he had deprived of a father, a 
husband, t>r a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye and a hand, were 
torn from him as a poor compensation for the loss, and a short respite 
was allowed him, that he might feel the bitterness of death. Astride 
on a camel he was carried through the city, and the basest of the 
populace delighted to heap insults on their fallen Emperor. After a 
thousand blows and outrages, Andronicus was hung by the feet be 
tween two pillars that supported the statues of a wolf and a sow ; and 
every hand that could reach the public enemy, inflicted on his body some 
mark: of ingenious or brutal cruelty till two furious or friendly 



CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 127 

Italians plunged their swords into his body, and released him from 
all punishment. In this long and painful agony, " Lord have mercy 
upon me," and, "Why will you bruise a broken reed," were the 
words which he kept continually repeating. 

Isaac Angelus was afterwards dethroned in consequence of his 
own vices and the ambition of his brother ; and their discord intro- 
duced the Franks to the conquest of Constantinople, 1204. 

Such are only a few examples out of many which might be ad- 
duced to illustrate the character of the Eastern Roman Emperors, 
and of that monarchy established at Constantinople. In the inter- 
vals of the Byzantine dynasties the succession is rapid and broken, 
and the name of a successful candidate is speedily erased by a more 
fortunate competitor. Many were the paths that led to the summit 
of royalty : the fabric which was raised by a rebellion was soon over- 
thrown by the stroke of a conspiracy, or undermined by the silent 
arts of intrigue. The favorites of the soldiers or people, of the sen- 
ate or clergy, of the women and eunuchs were alternately clothed 
with the purple. The means of their elevation was base, and their 
end was often contemptible or tragic, some of them being poisoned 
by their wives ; and such crimes as we have been reviewing were 
practised till the last age of the Eastern Empire. And what must 
have been the amount of crime committed, and suffering inflicted in 
the way of mutilation, and whipping, and torture, and all sorts and 
species of cruelties and death throughout the Empire for a period of 
over eleven hundred years? for we may certainly believe that the 
example of the oapital was followed, at least to some extent, in all 
the provinces by the governors and local magistrates ! Truly such a 
contemplation sends a thrill of horror to our heart, and brings a tear 
of sympathy and commiseration to our eye ! Truly, the contempla- 
tion of such a scene is enough to soften the most obdurate and un- 
sympathizing heart ! Who can now any longer doubt that the sym- 
bol of the " wild beast," with all the marks of a ferocious wild beast 
which we have considered in the beginning of chapter XIII. of Rev- 
elation, has here had its exact fulfilment ? The truth is, this is just 
its fulfilment, as we have all through illustrated, attempt to disguise 
it as we may. Who of us will now dare speak of the Pagan cruel- 
ties of Nero and Domitian, of Decius and Diocletian, while we have 
ourselves such monsters calling themselves Christian ; monsters who 
surpassed in wickedness even most of the examples of Paganism with 
which we are acquainted, and who had been the supreme heads of the 
Catholic oiiuroh, the high priests of the Empire, for twelve hundred 
years. 



128 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMO THEOLOGIES , ETC. 



An Explanation of Revelation XIII. from the 11th verse to 
the end of the Chapter, Showing its Fulfillment in the 
Papacy, in its Connection, first, with the Roman Empire, 
as Established at Constantinople; and, Secondly, as a 
Monarchy in itself over the Exarchate, especially in con- 
nection WITH THE IDEA OF SUPREMACY OVER THE FRANCO- 

German and the Anglo-Saxon-Norman Monarchies. 

The 11th verse of the XLIIth chapter of Revelation begins 
rather a different prophecy than a different phase of the proph- 
ecy which we have just considered. There, beginning with 
the 1st verse of the chapter we have represented a symbolic 
prefiguration, called a wild beast (dyptov), having seven heads 
and ten horns, etc., coming up out of the sea (as in Daniel VII. ) 
which I have shown to have symbolized the whole Christian 
Roman Empire, whose seat of government was at Constantino- 
ple. But here, beginning with verse 11th, we have a symbolic 
prefiguration called likewise a wild beast (dr,piov), coming up 
out of the earth, having two horns, like as a lamb, and speaking as 
dragon. I may say here that each verse of this whole chapter is a 
prophecy in itself , embracing ages ; I will give of the original Greek 
a fair equivalent in English, wherever I have to quote or translate. 
Rev. XIII., 2: "And I beheld another wild being coming up out 
of the earth, and he had two horns, like as a lamb, and he spoke as a 
dragon." Now, as to the horns and expression of face we are to 
understand that this symbol had somewhat of the appearance of a 
lamb ; but that in other respects he did not resemble a lamb; for, 
firstly, he is a wild beast ; and, secondly, he speaks as a dragon. 
We are, therefore, to conclude him to have been of the nature of 
the lamb only in appearance: and that he is really and acts contrary 
to the nature of the lamb. The first sight of this creature might 
not lead us to suppose that he would act harmfully, as the lamb is 
not accustomed to act harmfully or to use his horns in such way; 
but, a consideration of his general appearance would bring us to the 
proper conclusion concerning him; for, not considering his horns 
and lamb-like face, his other parts would be exponental of his voice, 
which was that of a dragon. There is implied in the general sym- 
bol the idea of deception; which, representing the head of a religio- 
political government, stands for Antichrist, that is, Christ to some 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 129 

extent, as to his appearance, but thinking and acting in a contrary 
way and manner to Christ. 

The symbolic prefiguration arising out of the sea means the Chris- 
tian Roman Empire beginning with Constantine coming up out of 
an unsettled state or affairs, the sea (the masses of the people) ; 
but this symbolic prefiguration comes up out of the earth (the 
church) ; and to this Principal of the church we find attached in the 
symbolization two remarkable appendages as horns. And now, as 
to how the whole of this arose, I have shown under my last head 
how that the city of Rome with its dependent territory was subju- 
gated and ruled over by the Goths and Vandals, at different times, 
for four or five generations in succession, between 410 and 553 
A. D. : How that it was reconquered in 553 A. D., by the Eastern 
Roman empire, and then retained in possession of that empire for 
201 years, that is, in the main to 754, A. D. ; during which last period 
it was governed by deputies of the emperor at Constantinople, who 
were called exarchs, and, as the emperor himself, united in their 
persons the civil, military and ecclesiastical branches of power. 
But in order to trace satisfactorily the chain of events by which this 
power passed from the exarchs and the eastern Roman empire to 
the popes I shall have to go back a little. 

With the emperor Leo III. commenced the Isaurian dynasty at 
Constantinople in the early part of the eight century. In his 
reign commenced the controversy respecting the worship of images, 
the Roman Church contending for the practice and the Greek 
church against it. This dispute separated the Greek and Latin 
churches, and contributed to disengage Italy from all dependence 
upon the eastern empire. Until this empire had proscribed image 
worship the authority of the court of Constantinople had been ac- 
knowledged at Rome. Gregory II., now pope, remonstrated; but 
finding his efforts for the removal of the interdict ineffectual, 
he excited the people to vindicate what they considered the 
cause of religion. Rome and Ravenna revolted and throughout 
Italy large bodies arose in arms. The statues of the emperors 
were broken and at Ravenna the exarch and many of the iconoclasts, 
or image breakers, were massacred; and thus the eastern and west- 
ern churches became ultimately divided in the year 741 A. D. 

Liutprand, the king of the Lombards, availing himself of those 
disorders, took Ravenna and subjugated to himself the cities of the 
exarchate. The emperors at Constantinople again recovered those 
possessions from him and continued their persecution of image 



130 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

worship, while the popes, not less zealously, continued to favor it. 
Astolphus of Lonibardy, the successor of Liutprand, again sub- 
dued Ravenna and threatened Rome. Stephen III., then pope, 
went in person to the court of Pepin, who had before been crowned 
king or* France by the bishop of Mentz, in order to ask his assist- 
ance to deliver Rome and the exarchate from the Lombards. This 
Pepin undertook and accomplished, wresting from Astolphus the 
exarchate, the government whereof he gave to the pope, thus con- 
stituting him a temporal sovereign; while the kings of France 
were henceforth understood as patricians of Rome. And, now, in 
speaking of France, I deem it expedient to go back a little and 
trace briefly the origin of the French nation and its polity. 

The Franks were a German tribe, who, in the third century, 
made in ancient Gaul, some conquests from the Romans, and were 
governed by chiefs or kings of the family of Meroveus the son of 
Clodion. A grandson of Meroveus, named Clovis, was chief of a 
tribe called the Salian and the recognized founder of the French 
monarchy in Gaul. It was he who defeated at Soissons, the old 
Roman general Syagrius, who, in the declining days of Rome, had 
established in Gaul an independent government of his own. This 
Roman province of Gaul was subjected to the Franks by Clovis. 

On the death of this king his dominions were divided between 
his four sons, who spent much of their time in mutual contention. 
Clothair, the youngest of the four, eventually reunited the king- 
dom of his father under his sole rule. He is said to have been 
succeeded by his four sons, who spent their time in much the same 
wayasdid the former four; and, on their death, were succeeded by 
Clothair II., the grandson of the former monarch of that name. 

In the disorders, consequent upon the imbecility or minority of 
thtfse Merovingian monarchs the administration of the government 
was entrusted to that State official called mayor of the palace and 
steward of the household; and these mayors, like Joseph in the 
household of Pharaoh, soon attained to such a degree of power, 
that the authority of the monarch became little more than nominal. 
One of these mayors, Pepjn D'Heristal, headed the nobles in a 
contest against the king and the people; and, after six years of 
war and tumult, was victorious in the battle of Testry, He herein 
established his authorit}^ over France, though he was not acknowl- 
edged as king; and he was, in like manner, succeeded in the gov- 
ernment by his son Charles Martel. During the administration of 
this man the Saracens conquered France from the Garome to the 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 131 

Rhone. Charles, having collected his forces, fought with them the 
great battle of Tours, which lasted, at intervals, seven days. The 
invaders he defeated here with very great loss and recovered the 
provinces. This battle is, as to its results, considered one of the 
most important ever fought, influencing as it did, the destiny not 
only of France but of Europe, and putting a check to the advance 
of the Mahometan religion. Charles was succeeded in the admin- 
istration by his son Pepin, who, performing the functions, aspired 
to the title of sovereign. The aid of Zachary, now pope of Rome, 
was sought by Pepin, who inquired of him, " Whether a prince 
incapable of governing, or a minister invested with royal authority 
and who supported it with dignity, ought to have the title of king?" 
The pope decided in favor of the latter; the people were dissolved 
from their allegiance ; and Childeric III., the last of the Merovingian 
race, was deprived of his crown and confined in a monastry. At 
Soissons Pepin was crowned king of France by St. Boniface, bishop 
of Mentz. Of his obligation to the popes he was not unmindful, 
as seen above; for having conquered from Astolphus, king of the 
Lombards, the exarchate of Ravenna, which the latter had pos- 
sessed for only a short time, he gave it in fee simple to the 
popes. 

Pepin was succeeded by his sons Charles and Carloman ; but the 
latter soon dying, left Charles sole monarch. This prince gave 
early indications of those qualities which gained him the title of 
Charles the great or Charlemagne. He found a pretext for invad- 
ing Lombardy in the hostilities of the king of that country against 
the pope. He crossed the great St. Bernard from Geneva, reduc- 
ing Pavia and Verona, and then Lombardy, taking its, king captive. 
He next visited Rome, where he was welcomed with joy as deliv- 
erer of the church by pope Adrian I. He now was crowned king 
of Lombardy, and affected to confirm to the popes the gift of his 
father to them, namely the exarchate. Yet during his life he left 
no doubt that these dominions were dependent upon his power, 
both Ravenna and Rome beino; numbered in the list of the Metro- 
politan cities of his great Roman empire of the West revived. 

In about 26 years after his conquest of Lombardy, when he had 
accomplished his conquest of his empire of the west, which, speak- 
ing territorially, included the whole of France, most of Germany, 
with northern and central Italy, and the northeastern districts of 
Spairr; or a great part of what the Romans had in Europe (except- 
ing Britain) together with most of Germany, Charlemagne was 



132 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

crowned emperor at Rome by the Pope. The following is from the 
history of " The Decline and Fall:" 

" On the festival of Christmas, in the last year of the eighth cen- 
tury, Charlemagne arrived in the Church of St. Peter, at Rome, 
having come thither from his camp at Paderborn in Germany, and 
to gratify the vanity of the Romans he appeared in the dress of a 
patrician, rather than in the simple habit of his native country. 
After the celebration of the Eucharist Pope Leo suddenly placed a 
precious crown upon his head, and the dome resounded with the 
acclamations of the people: " Long life and victory to Charles, 
the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific 
Emperor of the Romans." The head and body of Charlemagne 
were then anointed with the consecrated oil ; after the example of 
the Csesars he was saluted or adored by the Pontiff; his coronation 
oath represents a promise to maintain the faith and privileges of 
the church ; and in his rich offering to the shrine of St. Peter he 
paid to it the first-fruits. Thus was restored and revived the 
Western Empire by Charlemagne, which was held with so loose and 
feeble a hand by his ignoble successors that it was gradually lost 
but it was finally restored and appropriated by Otho, King, and 
afterwards Emperor of Germany, in the year 962, A. D. At the 
head of a victorious army, Otho passed the Alps, subdued the king- 
dom of Italy, delivered the Pope from the remaining power of the 
unwarlike descendants of Charlemagne, and thus fixed the imperial 
crown of the Western Empire in the name and nation of Germany. 
From that memorable epoch two maxims of public jurisprudence 
were introduced by force, and ratified by time. 1st: That the 
prince who was elected in the German Diet acquired from that 
moment the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. 2d: But that 
he might not legally assume the. titles of Emperor and Augustus till 
he had received the crown from the hands of the Pope. This last 
maxim was recognized and^ acted upon by the Germans for nearly 
live centuries, until after the coronation, in 1452, of Frederick III. 
of Austria, from which time his successors have excused them- 
selves from the superfluous honor of receiving the imperial crown 
from the hands of the Roman Pontiff; and rested their imperial 
title on the choice of the electors of Germany." * 

Charlemagne is said to have been highly esteemed by the mon- 
archs of his day. Irene, the empress of Constantinople (781—786), 
sought his friendship; and Haroun Al Raschid, the renowned 

* Gibbon Dec and FalL 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 133 

Caliph of Bagdad, entered into a correspondence with him and sent 
him the keys of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. 

The whole of western Christian Europe, then, with the exception 
of Britain, was subject to Charlemagne, so that he and his suc- 
cessors, the Franco-German kings and emperors, would have stood 
for one of the two horns of this symbolic prefiguration. The other 
horn would not have been represented by any then utterly unchris- 
tian nation, such as the Danes and Scandinavians at that time were; 
but by some nation, which, in about the interval 800-900 A. D., 
began definitely to acknowledge the Pope of Rome as its spiritual 
father and his supremacy over the rulers of the earth in his capac- 
ity of successor of St. Peter and vicegerent of Jesus Christ. But 
for two centuries at least before Charlemagne Britain had been 
Christianized: for, not speaking of what the celebrated mission- 
aries Sts. Alban, Patrick, Colum Cille, etc., did in the earlier 
centuries the history records that in 596, Pope Gregory the great 
sent into Britain forty Benedictine monks, with a superior of their 
institution, named Augustin at their head. This monk Augustin, 
on account of his labors in propagating the Catholic Gospel in 
Britain, is styled the British Apostle ; and before the year 600 he 
was made, by the then King of Kent, whom, with great numbers of 
his subjects, he had been instrumental in converting from Pagan- 
ism, the first archbishop of Canterbury. After this time the 
heathen places of worship among the Anglo-Saxons became grad- 
ually turned into Christian establishments; and Gregory, in his 
epistle to the Anglo-Saxon converts, permits them to offer in 
honor of the saints, on their respective holidays, the victims which 
they had formerly offered to their gods. Among the Saxons of 
Britain Christianity did not make remarkable progress before the 
year 600 any more than it did among the Saxons of the continent 
before the neighborhood of the year 800 when Charlemagne com- 
pelled that people, on the penalty of death, to receive Christian 
baptism. Indeed it was from the British Isles, principally from 
Ireland, that those Christian missionaries proceeded, who took the 
Gospel to Germany, before the age of Charlemagne. We read of 
St. Gall, St. Kilian and St. Columban, in the seventh century, con- 
verting Frieslanders, Franks and other Germanic nations to the 
Christian religion. 

The successors of Charlemagne to the throne of his empire, so 
long as his dynasty lasted, I find to have been, as tabulated here- 
under: 



134; CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC, 

Louis I., " le Debonnaire," son of Charlemagne. 
Lothaire, son of Louis I. 

Louis II., "the German," brother of Lothair. 
Charles I., " the bald," son of Louis I., by a second marriage. 
Louis III., " the stammerer," son of Charles " the bald" 
Louis IV., andCarloman, sons of Louis III., " the stammerer." 
Charles II., " the fat," son of Louis II., "the German." 
Charles III., "the simple," son of Louis III., the "stam- 
merer." 
In the reigns of all these princes, even in that of Charlemagne, 
the Normans pressed more or less upon the empire from the sea- 
board of France; but in the reign of Charles the fat they had be- 
come so aggressive as to come inland as far as Paris and besiege 
that city for two years without succeeding in reducing it. This 
king, however, ceded to them, as a fief of the French crown, for 
which they should render homage to the kings of France, the prov- 
ince known as Normandy, whereof the capital city was Rouen, ex- 
tending on the northeast side of France from the province of 
Brittany on the southwest to Flanders, and inland towards Paris on 
the Seine. 

In the cession of this province to the Normans it is said to have 
been stipulated on the side of the French that in pa}nng homage to 
the French king the Duke of Normandy should kiss the royal toe. 
This the duke who lived in the days of Charles the fat was unwilling 
to do and so it was arranged that one of his officers should perform 
the ceremony in his name. The deputy, as unwilling to stoop as 
his master, under pretense of carrying the royal foot to his mouth, 
overturned his majesty in the presence of his courtiers ; and Charles, 
unable to revenge the insult, submitted to it in silence. By reason 
of the general inability and lack of energy which he displayed in 
the conduct of his national affairs, especially for his having pur- 
chased the departure of the Normans from the siege of Paris, by 
means of money, the French deposed King Charles the fat, and ele- 
vated in his place Charles the simple yet a minor, giving the regency 
or administration of affairs to Hugh or Eudes, " count of Paris," 
who, with his brother Robert had performed great feats in defense of 
the city against the Normans. It is said that " under Charles the 
fat the empire of Charlemagne was nearly re-united," and that on 
his deposition, when Eudes or Hugh was administering the govern- 
ment in the name of Charles the simple, the Germans, or that part 
of the empire beyond the Rhine, elected as their king Arnulf , an 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 135 

illegitimate descendant of Charlemagne. Eudes is a Latin form 
of the old form Eadhach or Ethach, which is the original of the 
name Hugh and of the German name Otho or Otto. Eudes, whom 
with his brother Robert we have spoken of as having so bravely 
defended Paris from the Normans is denominated "Count of Paris," 
and it is stated that " while Charles the simple was yet a minor the 
the valiant Eudes held the sovereignty in trust." He was not 
reckoned in the line of the kings proper, but " king in trust." 
Now, there is no doubt that this Eudes, Count of Paris, is " Hugh 
the Great," who, in this age, " put up kings and put them down 
at his pleasure." There is no doubt either that he is the person, 
who, in the German history, is called Otho the Great, who "obliged 
the powerful nobles of Germany, who openly aspired to independ- 
ence, to submit to his authority;" and who " balanced their power 
by conferring upon the clergy the rights of temporal princes." 
He is the one at whose motion, as alleged, Charles the Fat was de- 
posed, and Charles the Simple, a minor, substituted in his place, 
while he himself was " king in trust." In the minority or foretime 
of Charles the Simple it was, of course, that he reduced the nobles to 
submission. The truth appears to be, however, that Charles, called 
the Fat, under whom "the empire was almost united," was king 
in the minority of Charles, called the simple. But consequent 
upon the alleged inability of Charles the Fat and Charles the 
simple, I see it stated as follows in the history of this period: 
"Five nations, each governed by their own laws and their own 
dukes, the Franconians, the Saxons, the Swabians, the Bavarians 
and Lorrainers, composed at this time the German Confederation, 
Among their princes were able men, and they determined to choose, 
in a pressing emergency (the terrible Huns having invaded them), 
one of their own number as their emperor. Assembled in diet at 
Worms, the electors of these nations conferred upon Conrad, Duke 
of Franconia, the imperial dignity. The reign of Conrad was dis- 
quieted by the rebellion of some of the most powerful nobles of 
the empire and by the irruptions of the Hunns, who spread them- 
selves over Pannonia, which from them received the name of Hun- 
gary. From thence they extended their ravages to the Baltic, 
passed the Rhine and desolated France and the northern parts of 
Italy. Germany was, however, the scene of their most destructive 
inroads. Conrad became weary of the cares of state and recom- 
mended a rival, who hud sought to deprive him of power, as his 
successor, because he believed his talents fitted him to be an able 



136 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

sovereign. This was Henry the Fowler, Duke of Saxony. He 
obtained a decided victory over the Hungarians, which though it 
did not effectually subdue their power yet freed the Germans from 
their depredations. He was succeeded by Otho the Great.' ' In 
another connection of the history I find: "Otho the Great suc- 
ceeded his distinguished father, Henry the Fowler." A com- 
parison of the dates given in the histories makes that given 
for the Conrad here spoken of as elected emperor, to be that 
of Eudes or Hugh, count of Paris; and, besides, Conrad, which is an 
old form for the more modern Henry, is simply a variation of the 
name Hugh (Latin, Eudes).* Conrad is simply the hard form 
which the German idiom presents for the old Gaulic form, Cha- 
ethanbhraidh. But a consideration of the sense of this quota- 
tion, taken in connection with the other historical collaterals, 
shows it, while having a historical foundation, when properly 
understood in the light of the equivalence of language forms, to be 
probably designed as a piece of nicely woven monkish fiction, to 
obscure this juncture of the German history in regard to the origin 
of the new dynasty. This makes Otho the Great, the founder of 
the new dynasty, to have been son of Henry the Fowler, duke of 
Saxony; whom it makes to have been emperor before Otho ; which 
would leave Otho to be not the founder of the new dynasty, as the 
German and French histories all take for granted he was ; but the 
second of that dynasty, which they name " Saxon." This name 
the monks give to the new dynasty is also a nice piece of policy for 
the conciliation of the Germans. Charlemagne compelled the whole 
nation of the Saxons, which included then most of the Germans, 
to receive Christianity under penalty of death; now, forsooth the 
Saxons get the upper hand and their dynasty replaces the old one 
of Charlemagne. But if the old dynasty of Charlemagne was so 
far German as to be Frankish so doubtless was the new dynasty, 
which was also doubtless descended from Charlemagne. The 
Gaelic professors from the British isles, who occupied posi- 
tions in colleges and otherwise on the continent, from time to 
time, would be admirably fitted to make out such a piece of the 
historical romance as this we meet with here; and we know it was 
the business of the priesthood, who were the historians and custo- 
dians of history and all learning in the ages of Catholic Chris- 
tianity, to reconcile the different sections of the races by every art 



• Gaelic Ethach=Chaeth, genitive Chaethan, Le., Conn, with the common ending raidhss 
Connraidh=Chaenry or Henry. 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 137 

and means which they could use, and which they considered harm- 
less, or in the use of which they considered the end justified the 
means. But in this quotation we see the meaning is beclouded. 
There was really no such confederation of five nations as this given 
at the time they put it ; for Charles the Fat whose ascent to the 
throne is put by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 885, and his death 
in 887 had in his dominion " almost the united empire of 
Charlemagne;" and this must be near the date of the selection 
of Conrad, duke of Franconia, for emperor. There were, 
doubtless, at that time, sons, brothers, and near cousins of 
the immediately reigning monarchs located in Saxony, Franconia, 
Swabia, Lorraine, Bavaria and elsewhere; but, what was after- 
wards known as the German confederation, did not exist; 
and, besides, we are told elsewhere, that on the deposition 
of Charles the Fat, while Hugh was holding the reins of govern- 
ment for Charles the Simple, as " king in trust," the Germans 
elected as their king one Arnulf, " an illegitimate" de- 
scendant of Charlemagne.* Now, whether Arnulf was or was 

* Under the date of 887 the A. S. Chronicle says: "This year the army (i.e., the northmen) 
went up through the bridge at Paris, and thence up along the Seine as far as the Marne, and 
thence up the Marne to Chezy, and then sat down there, and on the Yonne, two winters in the 
two places. And that same year Charles (the Fat), king of the French, died; and six weeks be- 
fore he died, Arnulf, his brother's son, bereaved him of the kingdom. And then was that 
kingdom divided into five, and five kings were consecrated thereto. This, however, was done 
by permission of Arnulf: and they said that they would hold it from his hand, because none of 
them on the father's side was born thereto except him alone." The divisions given here of the 
empire, which all were afterwards united under the power and name of Otho, are not those 
mentioned above. This speaks of the eastern, the middle and the western division, and then 
that of the Lombards and " the lands on that side of the mountain." The next we have in the 
Chronicle with reference to Continental matters is under date 890 as follows : " And that same 
year the army (the northmen) went from the Seine to St. Lo, which is between Britany and 
France; and the Bretons fought against them and had the victory and drove them out into a 
river and drowned many of them." —891. "This year the army (northmen) went eastward: 
and King Arnulf, with the east Franks and Saxons and Bavarians, fought against that part 
which was mounted before the ships came up and put them to flight." — 893. "In this year the 
great army (northmen), about which we formerly spoke, came again from the eastern king- 
dom westward to Boulogne, and there was shipped; so that they came over in one passage (to 
England) horses and all ; and they came to land at Limne-mouth with two hundred and fifty 
ships," etc. Here, having towed in their ships four miles they landed and fortified themselves 
and soon after the northman, Hasten, landed his force from eighty ships near the mouth of 
the Thames and there fortified his force. In about three years later all these northmen were 
in effect subdued by Alfred the Great. 

From other sources we learn that the father of Arnulf was named " Baldwin, Count of 
Flanders." But, doubtless, this was only one of the names and titles given him. 

But it seems to me the dates given by the A. S. Chronicle for the accession and death of 
Charles the Fat may be somewhat earlier than the real dates. Under the reign of Athelstan, 
grandson of Alfred, the great, who was flourishing in 934, Turner, in his history of the Anglo- 
Saxons, says : " When Charles the Simple, the king of France, was imprisoned and dethroned, 
his queen, Edgiva, fled into England to her father, Edward the Elder, carrying over her son 
Louis, but three years old. Athelstan treated his unfortunate sister with affection and 
respect." — "In 926 an intercourse was opened with Athelstan by Hugues (Hugh, the great), 
the son of Robert. Hugues requested of Athelstan his sister Ethilda in marriage. This was a 
very delicate negotiation. Hugues had co-operated with the other chiefs that had dethroned 
and still kept imprisoned the king, who had married the sister of the lady he wooed. This 



138 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

not " illegitimate," it is doubtless true that in those circumstances, 
the Germans admitted him as their king; and that the form of name 
Arnulf or Aedhulf afterwards mutated on the Monkish scrolls with 
the form of name Hugh, that is Otho the Great. Xow Otho defeats 
the Hungarians at Augsburg. He then adds to his dominions the 
kingdom of Bohemia by conquest of that country, " compelling its 
inhabitants to receive Christianity." But, according to our quota- 
tion, as given above, the five confederate German nations in their 
emergency-^- the terrible Hunns threatening them — assembled in 
diet at Worms, choose Conrad, Duke of Franconia, as their defender ; 
and he growing weary after a while of the cares of state, resigns 
his crown to Henry, duke of Saxony, a rival of his, who proceeds 
against the Hunns, or rather the Hungarians (for the Hunns had 
been in Europe since before the year -400), and defeats them. In 



sister was with Athelstan, with her infant child. Hugues, however, persevered in his suit and 
conducted it with dexterity. He obtained for his ambassador, Adulf, the son of the Count of 
Flanders and of Alfred's daughter, the aunt of Athelstan. The affinity of Adulf must have given 
interest to his negotiation." — After speaking of the splendid presents sent over by Hugues to 
the princess the record goes on to say : " Policy perhaps taught the importance to the dethroned 
Charles, or to his family, of making Hugues a friend. His wishes were, therefore, gratified 
and he became the brother-in-law of Athelstan." It would, however, seem that the ambassa- 
dor and Hugues may have been, in this case, the same person! For it goes on to relate that 
through the influence of Athelstan, the young Louis, the son of Charles the Simple, was restored 
to the French throne, bat that " his reign was not attended with the friendship of Hugnes." 
Louis thereupon, to secure himself against the aspiring nobles, procured the alliance of 
Athelstan, who promised to send a fleet to his succour. "This is the first example," says a 
modern French historian, " which we have in our history, not only of an offensive league be- 
tween France and England, but it is also the first treaty by which these two kingdoms con- 
cerned themselves about each other's welfare." — It relates how that Hugues at this time 
augmented his importance by going into Germany and marrying a princess, named Hadwida; 
and then goes onto say: "Athelstan performed his engagements. When Otho (Hngues) 
passed the Bhine, in 939, Louis claimed of England the stipulated aid. The Anglo-Saxon fleet 
sailed immediately for his support. It appeared off the coast of Flanders and protected the 
maritime cities; it ravaged some territories of the enemy, but returned to England without 
having had the opportunity of any important achievement." But look at wriat follows in con- 
nection : So much was Athelstan considered abroad that Arnulf, the Count of Flanders, having 
taken the fortress of the Count Herluin in 939, sent his captive wife and children to Athelstan." 
"NTow if this has any meaning it is that Arnulf, Adulf, Hugues and Otho, as mentioned here in 
the narrative, are all names referring to the same man. " The Anglo-Saxon fleet sails direcUy 
for Flanders." When a fleet sets sail with hostile intent it makes directly for the coast of its 
enemy. Hugues marries the German princess Hadw? 5a, thereby increasing his importance. 
Otho, thereupon, crosses the Rhine into France and Flanders at the head of his army; but it 
is Arnulf, Count of Fianders, that sends the captive wife to Athelstan in that same year, 939. 
And who, pray, was the lady alluded to by the " captive wife?" Why, who should have been 
alluded to if not the wife of Hugues and sister of Athelstan, whom Hugues, in a pet, may have 
now sent home, although, if he did, he doubtless still regarded her as his beloved wife, her 
place having not been by any means filled by Hadwida, whose name in the narrative is, in very 
trutn, a fiction. The Chronicle also mlsenters Charles " the Sinmle " for Charles " the Fat. 

Farther on, vol. I, 499, the same history says : " In 932 Otho sought a wife from the sisters of 
Athelstan. Editha was residing in her brother Athelstan's court, when ambassadors arrived 
to request her. Athelstan received them benignly, his sister assented, and a magnificent at- 
tendance, which his chancellor, Turketul, headed, conducted her to her royal lover. Her sister 
Adiva went with her that Otho might be more honored and might take his choice. Editha was 
preferred by the too highly honored Otho, and her sister was married to a prince near the Alps, 
who was one of the emperor's court." It, therefore, appears clear that Athelstan's sister, 
whatever her name may have been, was married to Hugh, otherwise called Otho, the great. 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 139 

the circumstances we must consider the Emperor Conrad to have 
been very accommodating to his rival, Henry, duke of Saxony, in 
giving up to him his crown, scepter and throne, as well as the 
honor, which we may believe would be more highly prized by a Ger- 
man emperor than almost anything else, that of defeating in a 
pitched battle the worst enemy the empire then had. But must we 
not think both the Emperor Conrad and the Emperor Henry to 
have inestimably favored Otho the Great, in giving him the privi- 
lege of defeating the Hungarians at Augsburg; although we do 
not find this real man, who did the real business, spoken of at all 
in connection with the "Diet at Worms," which selected Conrad? 
It is, therefore, not only convenient but safe for us to call the con- 
queror of the Hungarians at Augsburg by the two forms of the name 
in German for this man, Henry and Otho (the great) ; or by the two 
Gaulic forms iEdhach (Latin Eudes) and Hugh the great; or we can 
call him " Arnulf or Adulf (i.e., Aedh-daebh, the black Hugh) son 
of Baldwin, " Count of Flanders;" or "duke of Carinthia," as ac- 
cording to Zimmerman. But, as to the line under our considera- 
tion, it is safe to conclude the man called Charles " the Simple " to 
have been son and successor to him called Charles " the Fat," who, 
it is recorded, had in his dominion " almost the united empire of 
Charlemagne." Secondly, my research leaves no doubt in my 
mind that these two are the same respectively with those named 
Eudes or Hugh the great, and his son, Hugh Capet; and with those 
called Otho the great, and his son, Otho II; and with those called 
Arnulf (i.e. Arnold, or Arnot, i.e. Arn-oth, Gaelic Eacharn ) and 
his son Louis; and, again, with those called Lothair and his son 
Louis. Of the latter the two sons Eudes, or Otho III, and " his 
brother Robert " begin the two historic dynastic lines, the former 
for Germany, called "the Saxon," the latter for France, called 
" the Capetian." The latter dynasty, in the history of France, is 
reputed to have been of Saxon origin, doubtless, because they were 
in descent from Louis II, called " the German." * The Chronicle 
of St. Florent (ap. Scr. Fr. IX, 55), calls Charles " the Simple" 
Capet, or Karolus Stultus vel Capet. But Capet, in this case, means 
not "stultus," stupid or simple; it means the same as the Gaelic 
Chaethan or Chon ; a term applied to a priest, as, for example, the 
Capuchian monks, from the hood (cap or chapet) they used to wear: 
and so Hugh is called in some of the Chronicles Hugo Caputius, in 
others Hugues Chapet, etc. Conrad I and Henry " the Fowler ' 
being granted emperors by the grace of "Romance," the subjoined 
tabulation will fairly show this juncture of the history: — 

1. Charles "the Fat," i.e. Eudes or Hugh, I.e. Arnulf, i.e. Lothair, i.e. Otho the great: — 

2. Charles "the Simple," i.e. Hugh Capet, i.e. Louis, i.e. Otho II, his son, as ahove : — 



* See Michelet's History of France, Bks. Ill and IV, and Zimmerman's German)', etc 



140 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 



Robert, son of Hugh Capet and brother of Otho III, i.e., Henry n, son of Otho n. 

Henry I, son of Robert Henry III, i.e., Conrad H, son of 

Philip I, son of Henry I Henry IV, son of 

Louis VI, son of Philip I Henry V, i.e. Conrad III, son of 

Louis VII, son of Frederic Barbarossa, a brother 

. Philip Augustus son of . Henry VI, son of 

o Louis VIII, son of a Frederic II, son of, (Ghibelines). 

§ Louis IX, son of g Rodolf, first of the Hapsburgs (Guelphs).* 

f* Philip, the Hardy, son of 5 Albert, son of; warred with Wm. Tell. 

Philip, the Fair, son of & Leopold 

Louis X, son of Henry of Luxembourg 

^ Philip, the Long, brother of Louis of Bavaria 

° Charles the Fair, brother of © Charles of Luxem- . «* ij^g Golden Bull" 

Philip of Valois, cousin of, 1328. bourg i 1355-1378. 

John Winceslaus, son of ' now isSQed - 

© Charles V Frederick H of Brunswick 

J Charles VI £ Rupert 

Charles VTI ^ Sigismund 

Louis XI Frederick ni 

Charles VHI Maximilian 

Louis XII, " of Orleans " Philip, son of, not emperor 
Francis I, " his cousin" time of Reformation Charles V, son of, time of Reformation. 

Ferdinand, his brother, emperor. 

Line of Germany. 

The history as it comes down to us makes Henry II. to have 
been " grandson of Otho II.," and the successor of Otho III. ; but 
the truth is he was identical with Otho III. It also makes Conrad 
II. to have been father of Henry III. ; but he was either identical 
with him or was not emperor. There is much of the historical 
romance interwoven into the German history of this period, or pos- 
sibly much may have arisen from the errors of writers or tran- 
scribers who did not know the equivalence of certain Gaulic and 
German name forms. For example the reign of the third man in 
our list is full of important events under his form of name Otho 
III.; but, under his name Henry II., it says: '* His reign is 
marked by no important event ; ' ' and then goes on and fills in a 
space with a monkish story in which his name is mixed up. Under 
the name Conrad III. what is recorded is his conduct of the second 
crusade to Palestine, in which he was unsuccessful and on his re- 
turn from which he was succeeded by his brother Frederic Bar- 
barossa. During most of his life Henry IV. was involved in 
quarrels with the Popes. At the instigation of Urban II. Conrad, 
the son of Henry IV. rebels and assumes the title of king of 
Italy, inducing many .of the cities to submit to his sway. Mean- 
while Conrad and Urban both die, and the succeeding Pope Pascal 

* In the minority of Frederic H, Otho IV, of the rival family of the Guelphs, held the gov- 
ernment. After Frederic's death his son, called Conrad IV, and his grandson Conradin, made 
some insignificent figure, never however properly at the head of the imperium 



PAPAL- GEKMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 141 

II. induces Henry, " a younger son of Henry IV., to rebel and as- 
sume the imperial honors. Henry IV., therefore, having, by all 
means, had to clear the way for his rebellious son, and lay aside 
his imperial dignity, is reduced to the position of a beggar, going 
especially among the churches of Spires, to solicit the office of 
" underchanter " which is refused him. In the record given 
of the reign of Henry V. we have a repetition of that of 
Henry IV., some scenes and words being slightly varied. He re- 
peatedly marches into Italy, defeats the pope's forces and at one 
time succeeds in making the pope his prisoner. He deposes the 
pope ; who in turn excommunicates him , but he appoints a new 
pope, who revokes the sentence. Now, this is a repetition on 
paper of the real life of Henry IV. It then follows that the states 
weary of the contest between the emperor and the pope effects a 
reconciliation. " The pope called a council, at which the ambassa- 
dors of the emperor appeared and in which a compromise between 
the emperor and the pope was concluded." This, doubtless, hap- 
pened in the latter part of the reign of Henry IV. ; so that we 
may, perhaps, safely conclude that Henry IV. died in the posses- 
sion of the imperium and not in the condition of a beggar, as set 
forth in the record. For a long period of his reign it is certain 
Henry IV. warred against the pope, and Gregory VIII. thoroughly 
humbled him, in the disciplinary way in which the Catholic church 
did its devotees in those ages ; but this discipline he submitted to of 
his own free will, while he was emperor with all the forces of the 
government at his command ; powers which he would not be likely 
to relinquish to any disobedient son of his, at the instigation or the 
dictation of either church or state^ 

Immediately succeeding Henry V. and immediately preceding 
Conrad III. the records place Lothair as emperor. Henry V. and 
Lothair, his successor, the history represents as dying without 
children, the last being succeeded by Conrad III., " nephew of 
Henry V.," who, in his turn is succeeded by his brother Frederic 
Barbarossa. The fact of two emperors dying in succession with- 
out leaving children may not be in itself significant; but the fact 
that in the Gaelic the clann Lothairchon or Loarn and the clan 
Chathan, i.e., Conn (whence Conrad and Henry), and Daebhair- 
chon or Duff refer to the same general clan might lead to the con- 
clusion that the three names, Henry V., Lothair, and Conrad III., 
all stand for the same person, who was the son and successor of 
Henry IV., and performed himself and through others the acts re- 



142 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

corded under these three names. Whether or not Lothair was 
emperor and other than the son and successor of Henry IV, to the 
three names are given 46 years? 

Conrad III. is the last of the name Conrad in the list of German 
emperors, and the whole three are represented as having been 
elected to the head of the empire from having been dukes of Fran- 
conia The name Conrad, therefore, would seem to have been re- 
garded or intended as a race appellation, as we have the root in 
the name of place Franconia (Fran-con-iath). The root from 
which arises the name France is properly Fran-chaedh that is, 
Fran-Eochaidh ; or putting this last component in the genitive, 
Franethach; and, by transpotition of the two last syllables of the 
last component, Fran-chaedh. Adding iath, pronounced ia (and 
which is only another form of aedh or chaedh, and is equivalent to 
Chaedhan, or Conn) to the end of a personal appellation makes a 
territorial appellation. Franchaeth, which the French pronounce 
Franshaw, is a surname sparsely scattered among us and carrying 
with it the French pronunciation. That Franchaedh is the Gaelic 
Branchaedh or Branchu or Brandaebh needs, of course, no proof. 
Brand or Frand has in it the primitive meaning of friend, that is 
" blood relation," son or child, which would make the name Fran- 
chaedh mean, for one thing, son or child of the chief. Brand and 
Frand are an expansion of Bred and Fred (for example in the 
Gaelic Carbraidh and the German Frederic, both of which mean 
child of the king or chief) by giving to the d its nasal sound. Thus 
a Frank is literally a branch, which means a scion or offspring of 
the particular stock of which it is. The soft consonants of the 
Gaelic and Gaulic or French, which in these last named languages 
are silent, have, to the northward of the Rhine, their hard sound. 

All the three Conrads given in our list, therefore, we may un- 
derstand as race designations, for with Conrad, as you see in each 
case, there appears another name for the man. Some Germans 
were and are undoubtedly called by the name Conrad ; but where 
this name is given in the list of the emperors, it is intended that it 
shall draw particular attention to the Frankish race ; and you may 
call the emperor for whom it stands Conrad, or some other of the 
equivalents of this. 

Henry IV. became involved with the popes in that war called 
" the war of investitures." Some of the preceding emperors, per- 
haps all, had exercised the right of nominating bishops and abbots 
and giving them investiture by the ring and crozier; but, during 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 143 

the reign of Henry III. Pope Alexander II. had published a decree 
forbidding this investiture by the secular powers and the doctrine 
was now maintained by the clergy that as the spiritual is superior to 
the temporal the bishops and abbots received their investiture from 
God and not from the emperor; but, on the contrary, that the em- 
peror was to hold his investiture of the pope and his authority un- 
der him. 

Gregory VII., who is called Hildebrand was now pope; and, 
dispatching a legate to the German emperor, he forbade him to ex- 
ercise the right of investiture. His envoy Henry treated with con- 
tempt; and, in an assembly of his princes and ecclesiastics, he had 
convoked, declared Gregory an usurper of the papacy. Before 
this time Henry had experienced a good deal of trouble with his 
nobles, and Gregory, aware of this disaffection, pronounced a 
sentence of excommunication against Henry, absolving his subjects 
from their allegiance and depriving him of his imperial authority. 
Thus encouraged the German nobles revolted and the German 
clergy, who had just before declared Gregory an usurper now 
espoused his cause. 

Surrounded with dangers Henry now imagined he saw no safety 
but in conciliating the pope and in having the excommunication 
removed. To this end he passed the Alps and visited, in company 
with only a few domestics, Canosa, where Gregory then was, and 
presented himself as a penitent at the gates of the fortress. But 
the monarch was only admitted within the outer court; there 
wrapped in sackcloth and in his bare feet he was detained three 
day3 in the month of January before the pope would permit him to 
his presence. The penanee and the promise to obey in all things 
having been accomplished Henry obtained absolution. 

This reconciliation was, however, but of short duration. The 
Italian princes observing the pope's haughtiness took part with Henry. 
He, with their help renewed the war; but, while engaged with the 
Italians against the pope, his German subjects revolted. A second 
time he was excommunicated by Gregory, who now also deposed 
him, and declared Rodolph, Duke of Swabia, emperor. Henry, 
however, augmenting his party among the Germans all he could, in 
a convention of the few bishops who adhered to him, he deposed 
Gregory and appointed another pope. Rodolf he defeated and 
slew when his followers dispersed. The emperor, then, returned 
to Italy and besieged Rome for two years, when at length the city 
was carried by assault. Gregory escaped, but did not long survive. 



144 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Henry caused Clement III. to be consecrated pope ; but after his 
return to Germany his enemies deposed Clement and elected Victor, 
whose early death made way for Urban II. He renewed the war 
of the investitures and involved Henry in that war with his son 
Conrad, which I have mentioned. Events change now rapidly. 
Conrad and Urban, having both departed to the mansions beyond 
the skies, Pascal II., who took Urban's place, excommunicates the 
emperor and instigates his younger son Henry to revolt and assume 
the title of emperor. Henry was then, as a matter of course, de- 
posed, and he who had fought the number of battles save forty of 
the celebrated Irish monarch, Conn Cead Cathach, was reduced to 
such distress that he applied for the place of underchanter in a 
church at Spires, and was refused where he had a right to expect 
gratitude ! This history, as we have it, has doubtless been made 
to do much effectual service in teaching the church's authority and 
in setting forth conspicuous examples of humility thereto. 

On the accession of Conrad III., the Duke of Bavaria of the 
family of the Guelphs, aided by the pope, disputed his title and 
embroiled the empire in a civil war. The emperor Conrad's 
brother Frederic, Duke of Swabia, commanded the imperial forces 
and his soldiers took the name of Ghibelines, from Ghibel, the 
place of Frederic's nativity. Hence while the party favored by 
the popes were called the Guelphs, that of the Emperor Conrad 
was called the Ghibelines, and the wars for supremacy, which had 
been called the wars of the investitures, were renewed under the 
party watchwords of Guelphs and Ghibelines. 

During the wars of these two parties it is said that, the castle of 
"Weinsberg having been taken, the women obtained leave to quit the 
premises with what they could carry, when behold they came forth, 
each with her husband upon her back ! 

Conrad III., having, for the time, effected the restoration of 
tranquility, resolved to lead forward an army in defense of the 
Christians in the Holy Land, they being now oppressed by the 
Mahometan powers, who, in 1144 tookEdessa. Conrad, therefore, 
embarked zealously in the second crusade, in which his enterprise 
was a complete failure. On his return his brother Frederic Bar- 
barossa assumed the empire in his stead. He continued the wars 
with the popes, and wreaked a signal vengeance upon the Italian 
cities, which attempted to revolt from his authority. 

To Frederic Barbarossa succeeded his son, Henry VI. He un- 
dertook a war to acquire for himself the kingdom of Sicily, which 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 145 

he claimed in right of his wife. In two expeditions he conquered, 
not only that kingdom, but southern Italy, including Naples. 

To him succeeded his son Frederic II. He was several times ex- 
communicated by as many popes ; but he stoutly maintained his 
cause until death released them from an uncompromising foe. On 
his death great confusion ensued; several emperors were spoken 
of but none properly acknowledged, until Rodolph of Hapsburgh, 
of the family of the Guelphs, who also possessed considerable ter- 
ritory in Switzerland, was raised to the throne. From him sprung 
the well known house of Austria. To Rodolph succeeded Albert, 
his eldest son, who failed ignominiously in his wars against the 
Swiss. Leopold, his successor, going against them with 21,000 
cavalry was defeated by 13,000 Swiss infantry at Morgarten, in 
the year 1315; a victory which established the independence of 
Switzerland. At this time there were only three cantons in the 
Swiss republic, but other cantons joining there were in 1353 thir- 
teen. Henry, count of Luxembourgh, who succeeded Leopold, 
reigned but four years, 1318—1322; his reign, however, is full of 
events; intrigues at home; wars with the popes and with Italy. 
In the prosecution of one of these he died suddenly at Benevento. 
After an interregnum of fourteen months Louis of Bavaria having 
become firmly seated on the throne as a result of a contest with an- 
other claimant for it, carried his arms into Italy. Pope John 
XXII., who was then residing at Avignon in France, incited the 
German princes to revolt. Before the emperor's return to quell 
the domestic disturbances the pope, having recovered his power at 
Rome, the friends of the emperor were expelled the city. Louis 
finding a reconciliation with the Roman See impossible, convoked a 
diet, which decreed that the pope had no authority above the Ger- 
man emperor ; and that his approval was not essential in the choos- 
ing of the emperor. The empire for a while remained peaceful; 
but the Papal intrigues again produced open hostilities to Louis ; 
and Clement VI., who had succeeded to John XXII. procured the 
election of Charles of Luxembourg, son and heir of the king of 
Bohemia, a near heir to the empire of the house of Hapsburg. 
Charles becoming emperor, on the death of Louis, became a mere 
tool in the hands of the popes. It was during this reign that the 
constitution of the " Golden Bull" was established. This shows a 
German confederacy of States, before only vaguely understood as 
a confederacy, to be now established. In it the number and duties 
of the electors are settled; and the succession to each electorate 

10 



146 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

declared to belong to the oldest son. An apostrophe to Satan, 
Anger, Pride and Luxury begins this famous document, and it sets 
forth the necessity that the number of electors should be seven " in 
order to oppose the seven mortal sins." Before this time and 
even after it the German empire may be considered as an heredi- 
tary monarchy. The idea of the German emperor before this 
period having been chosen from so many candidates for that office 
presenting themselves for election is a false one. Still there was 
from the time of Otho I. more of the idea of the German empire 
being constituted of a confederation of States than of the French 
monarchy being so; but in point of fact, the German Empire from 
the time of Otho I. to the issuing of the Golden Bull was an heredi- 
tary monarchy. There has undoubtedly, in the after times, been 
an attempt made to make it appear in the history that the German 
empire, for that period, was an elective monarchy; and on each 
occasion they make a new dynasty begin they invariably commence 
it with the name " Conrad, duke of Franconia." But in each of the 
three cases of the name Conrad being introduced I have shown it 
to be simply another form of name of the man, who was the right- 
ful successor to the throne; whose name, too, may as properly be 
called Conrad as Henry or any other form of name set down for him. 
Charles of Luxembourg was succeeded on the throne by his son 
Winceslaus, whose shameful profligacy so disqualified him for the 
care of the empire that he was deposed by the electors and Frederic, 
duke of Brunswick, chosen in his place. He subsequently having 
been murdered Rupert count palatine of the Rhine was placed on 
the throne. In his reign John Huss began to teach in Bohemia the 
doctrines Wickliffe had just disseminated in England. Rupert was 
succeeded on the throne by Sigismund, king of Hungary, the brother 
of the deposed Winceslaus. In his reign was held the council of 
Constance which condemned to the flames John Huss and Jerome 
of Prague for the " crime of heresy." He was succeeded on the 
imperial throne by Frederic, duke of Austria, who was crowned by 
the pope as Frederic III; and he, in turn, after a reign of fifty- 
three years, was succeeded by his son Maximilian, who having 
married Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the bold, king of 
Burgundy, added, through her, to the empire the kingdoms of Bur- 
gundy and Flanders. Maximilian died in 1518 and was succeeded 
by his grandson, Charles V, by his son Philip the Handsome. 
Charles V. was the German emperor who figured so conspicuously 
in the Protestant reformation. 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 147 



Line of France. 

Hugh Capet, whose length of reign under this form of name is 
the same as that the German histories allow him under the form 
Otho II, was succeeded in France by his son Robert. As regards 
his foreign relations Robert was happy, but his domestic felicity 
was sadly blighted by the discipline which the Papacy then exercised 
over the kings and potentates of its faith. He had married Bertha, 
the sister of Rodolph, king of Burgundy, she being his cousin in 
the fourth degree, while the prohibition of the church extended to 
the seventh ; and Gregory V ordered the dissolution of the marriage 
under pain of excommunication. 

This terror, aimed not only at him but at all who abetted his 
offense, the king ventured to disregard. The bishops who had 
sanctioned the marriage were suspended; and Robert soon experi- 
enced how terrible the power of excommunication had become. 
His servants, courtiers and domestics abandoned him ; even the two 
domestics who bravely remained with him purified by fire the vessels 
he had used and threw the remaining food to the dogs ; whether 
they then kept any pigs about the French court being left unmen- 
tioned ! Instead of manfully arousing himself to her defense and 
encouragement Robert at length divorced his wife. 

His son and successor, Henry, being disturbed by domestic con- 
spiracies, sought aid of Robert, duke of Normandy, who re-estab- 
lished and supported him on the throne and was rewarded therefor 
by the duchy of Chaumont, Pontoise and other territories, which 
greatly extended the Norman dominions in France. In the year 
1060 he was succeeded by his son Philip I, when only eight years 
of age, who (Baldwin count of Flanders acting regent in his 
minority) may be said to have occupied the throne forty-eight 
years, 1060-1108, embracing the time of the first crusade. In the 
fourteenth year of his age occurred the Norman invasion of En- 
gland*, the ultimate result whereof made the Normans one of the 
great powers of Europe. 

The rise of the Norman power in France was contemporaneous 
with that of the Franco-German monarchy. It is said that the 
contemplation of the invasion of the Norman pirates, whom he 
foresaw would distress his people, caused Charlemagne to shed 
tears. From the death of this emperor to the time of the Norman 
invasion of England in 1066, the Norman dominions in France had 



148 CREATOR AND COSMOS ,* OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

been gradually extending. Of the dissensions which existed be- 
tween the sons and descendants of the first Franco-German emperor 
the Normans took advantage and profited thereby. When in about 
the year 905 the Normans or Danes made a new incursion they 
spread devastation far and wide, plundering churches and carrying 
terror and dismay into the remotest part of the country. It is said 
that at this time the martial spirit almost wholly deserted the 
Franks, who suffered themselves to be plundered and even butchered 
by the barbarians. The Normans were, however, not long in the 
country before they became christianized and at the rise of the 
crusades they engaged in those expeditions with great ardor. 

The highest title arnon^ the Normans was that of duke. This 
chief adopted the feudal system, dividing Normandy into large 
shares among his chief captains, on the condition of their furnishing 
him a stipulated number of armed men for active service when 
required and of their acknowledging their dependence on him by 
rendering him homage. These captains divided the remainder of 
the land thus assigned them, each among his own favorites, who 
were to furnish soldiers to those chiefs as they themselves were to 
the duke. If this system had its imperfections it was yet an im- 
provement upon the former manner of life of the Normans, as it 
was better that they should settle down and cultivate the soil by 
their labor, deriving from it thus a subsistence, than that they should 
go about from place to place subsisting upon other people's property 
obtained by violence and murder. And in order that other free- 
booters should not destroy them, as they themselves had the people 
that preceded them, it was thought necessary to maintain a military 
organization. But in the progress of time the feudal system be- 
came exceedingly oppressive to the serfs or villains as the lowest 
class was denominated, whereof were always the former inhabitants 
of the conquered countries. Being liable to be sold with the land 
their condition was essentially that of slaves ; but not being legally 
transferable unless with the soil families were not liable to be 
forcibly disunited, which may perhaps be thought an ameliorating 
condition of that state of bondage. 

Philip L, king of France, above mentioned, was succeeded by 
his son Louis VI., who was succeeded by his son Louis VII. 
Henry II. of England, by marriage with his divorced queen Elea- 
nor, acquired the French provinces of Guienne and Poictou, which 
were her dowry. 

To Louis VII. succeeded his son Philip Augustus in 1180. At 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 149 

the age of maturity he bore the character of a wily politician. 
With Richard, the son of Henry II. of England, he entered into an 
alliance and aided him in a rebellion against his father : and with 
him, after he had come to the throne of England, he engaged in the 
third crusade. Each of these monarchs were ardent military chief- 
tains and it is thought they regarded Palestine less with the feeling 
of devotion than as a field whereon they should reap the laurels 
they so much coveted. 

Philip Augustus was succeeded by his son Louis VIII. His 
reign is memorable for nothing save the finishing of a cruel war 
undertaken by his father against the Waldenses and Albigenses, 
religious orders in Dauphiny, Narbonne and Provence in southern 
France. Pope Innocent III. decreed their destruction, and Simon 
de Montfort, with 200,000 men, was employed in extirpating a 
million of people whose crime was their harmlessness, shall we say 
their godliness? 

Louis IX., called St. Louis, succeeded his father in his minority, 
his mother, Blanche of Castile, acting as regent until he came of 
age. His two crusades I mention under a succeeding head. 

He was succeeded on the throne by his son Philip, the Hardy, in 
whose reign the massacre of the French took place in the island of 
Sicily, called " the Sicilian Vespers ; " in retaliation for which he 
never accomplished much. To him succeeded his son, Philip the 
Fair, 1288-1314. His finances being in a depleted condition he 
exacted money from the clergy of his kingdom by which he got 
into difficulty with the then pope, Boniface III., who had prohib- 
ited the clergy of any kingdom from giving money to princes with- 
out his special permission. The pope sent as a legate to 
remonstrate with the French king one of his own rebel subjects, 
who was immediately arrested and imprisoned. Enraged at this, 
Boniface issued a proclamation declaring that the " Vicar of Christ 
was vested with all authority over all the kings and princes of the 
earth," and at the same time ordering the French clergy to repair 
forthwith to Rome. A French priest carried this proclamation to 
the king. Philip throwing it into the fire convoked thereupon the 
representatives of the states of his kingdom and laid the case be- 
fore them. They disavowed the pope's claim, deciding for the in- 
dependent authority of Philip. " It was on this occasion that the 
representatives of cities were first regularly summoned to the na- 
tional assembly. Philip IV. improved the civil policy of France, 
both in the legislative and judicial departments.' ' To him sue- 



150 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ceeded his son Louis X., a man of a remarkably avaricious spirit. 1 
His prime minister, Marigny, lie had executed on the pretense of 
his dealing in magic, but in reality that he might confiscate his ex- 
tensive possessions. On his death without male heirs a contest 
arose about the right of female succession. The Salic law having 
declared that no female could inherit the crown of France the de- 
cision was unfavorable to the daughter of the king. The crown, 
therefore, passed first to Philip the Long, then to Charles the Fair, 
both brothers of the late king. The short reigns of these princes, 
who died without male heirs, were followed by the elevation of 
Philip of Valois, a cousin of the late kings, who was the first of the 
" house of Valois," so-called: 1328. 

To Philip VI succeeded his son John, at the time that Edward 
III and the Black Prince were carrying on war in France. At the 
battle of Cressy, John was taken prisoner by the Black Prince and 
carried to England where he was treated with respectability. Dur- 
ing a truce with England of two years the peasants rose against 
the nobility, burnt their castles and murdered their families. 
Charles, the dauphin, in the absence of his father, worked energet- 
ically to restore order in the state. The peasants' war called the 
war of " the Jaquerie " was quelled ; the truce with England ex- 
changed for a peace ; and King John was liberated in consideration 
of a sum of money, and for ceding, even without reservation of 
right of homage, several French provinces to England. 

John, dying soon after the peace, Charles V, his son, succeeded 
to the throne. After he made sufficient preparation he renewed 
the war with England, whose affairs on the continent, consequent 
upon the advanced age of Edward III, and the feeble health of the 
Black Prince, were now not prosperous. He conquered, during the 
remaining years of his reign, all the English possessions in France, 
excepting Bordeaux, Calais and Bayonne. 

His son, Charles VI, yet in his minority, succeeded him; his 
uncles the dukes of Anjou, Berri and Burgundy being constituted 
regents, through the extravagance of the regal household and 
the dishonesty of administrative offices they overburdened the 
people with taxes, which led ultimately to a civil war. The hostile 
parties, called from their leaders Burgundians and Orleanists or 
Armagnacs each struggled to obtain the person of the young king, 
and as they obtained it, alternately seized the executive offices. 
The populace of Paris espoused the opposite sides with the 
most ferocious zeal and committed the most shocking crimes. 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 151 

The young king became insane for life. Henry V, now on 
the English throne, took occasion, in these disturbances to renew 
the war. Having landed an army at the mouth of the Seine he 
took Harfleur. The French, in the face of a foreign invasion, 
for a moment suspended their quarrels and rallied in defense of 
the kingdom. An army of 50,000 men under the Constable D' 
Albert, having posted themselves at the village of Agincourt to in- 
tercept the English on their march inland, a bloody battle ensued 
wherein the English were victorious over an army much more num- 
erous. Henry, having possessed himself of Normandy prepared to 
advance on Paris, and Philip, duke of Burgundy, consequent upon 
a treacherous deed done to his party to which he supposed the 
royal family was privy, hastened to offer him the crown of France. 
The Orleanists also intrigued with this foreign king. A treaty was 
was made at Troyes in which affairs were compromised, Henry 
espousing the princess Catherine, the daughter of the French king 
and being declared heir of the French monarchy. The two kings 
Henry V and Charles VI, dying the same year, Henry VI, the 
infant son of Henry V, was proclaimed king at both Paris and 
London. But the dauphin assuming the government under the 
title of Charles VII, took the field, and was crowned by his parti- 
sans at Poictiers, Rheims, the usual place of coronation being in 
the hands of the English. On the part of the English the regency 
of France was entrusted to the duke of Bedford, brother of the 
late king. It is in this connection the story of the " Maid of Or- 
leans," comes in, which I relate elsewhere; and, whether by her 
assistance or otherwise, Charles VII is said ultimately to have ob- 
tained entire possession of his kingdom. 

To him succeeded in 1461, his son Louis XI, who is character- 
ized by the intriguing policy which he followed. His attempts to 
humble his great vassals and extend the prerogative of the crown 
produced the war " called the war of the Public Weal," which 
ended in a treaty favorable to his vassals, but which he soon in- 
fringed. On the death of the king of Burgundy Louis seized part 
of the dominions of that kingdom, which really belonged to the 
heiress of that kingdom who later married Maximilian of Austria. 
He is said to have been a great tyrant without permitting others in 
his kingdom to be such, so far as he knew. In his reign 4,000 are 
estimated to have been tortured without any kind of trial. He is 
also said to have been superstitious and in continual dread of pun- 
ishment that might accrue to him after death. On his death, in 



152 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

1483, his son, Charles VIII., succeeded. He married Anne, the 
duchess of Brittany, by which that province " the last of the great 
feudatories of France," was annexed to the crown. Dying with- 
out male heirs Charles VIII. was succeeded by the duke of Orleans, 
under the title of Louis XII. By various incitements having al- 
lured the Venetians, the Florentines and Pope Alexander VI. to his 
interest he sent an army into Italy and achieved the conquest of 
Milan, which he claimed in right of his grandmother. He then 
formed a league with Ferdinand of Spain, called the " league of 
partition " by which they agreed to divide the kingdom of Naples 
between them; but while the negotiations were proceeding the 
Spaniards had conquered for themselves the whole of that country, 
thus deceiving the French king. Louis then prepared to attack 
Spain; but the Spaniards, nevertheless, remained in possession of 
the Neapolitan kingdom. 

But meantime, Pope Alexander VI. had died and was succeeded 
by Julius II. The object of this pontiff was to extend his temporal 
sovereignty over all Italy, so that the popedom might fairly rival 
in extent of territory the other temporal sovereignties of Europe. 
To effect this the pope entered into an alliance, called " the league 
of Cambray " with Louis of France and Maximilian of Germany. 
The Venetians could not, of course, withstand the force of this 
coalition, having lost a battle on the continent they retreated within 
their city. The only ground the confederates put forward for the 
war they now waged was that the people against whom they warred 
had no king. They, therefore, stirred up the envy of those who 
had. 

Julius resolving to expel every foreign power from Italy now al- 
lured the Venetians into an alliance against France, and finally 
Spain and Switzerland joined the " holy league." Louis XII. on his 
part dispatched into Italy a powerful army under the command of 
his gallant nephew, Gaston de Foix. After several brilliant skir- 
mishes the young hero penetrated to Kavenna, where he came up 
with the combined force of the confederates and completely de- 
feated it; but he fell in this battle, and with him the fortunes of 
the French in this campaign. The French were driven out of 
Milan and the king of Spain conquered Navarre from that French 
nobleman John d' Albert, who obtained it in marriage with the 
heiress of that kingdom. 

Pope Julius dying in 1513, changed the aspect of affairs. His 
successor, Leo X. of the house of Medici, showed himself friendly 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 153 

to France Louis XII. dying soon after pope Julius, without male 
heirs, the crown of France descended to his cousin Francis I. This 
prince was distinguished rather for his comeliness, suavity of man- 
ners and personal accomplishments, than for the strength and 
soundness of his mind. Bent on the recovery of Milan he led a 
large army across the Alps. Encountering the Swiss, in the serv- 
ice of the Milanese, he defeated them in a hard fought battle at 
Marignan. The duchy of Milan submitted, and its duke, Maximil- 
ian Sforza, abandoning his claim to its sovereignty, received a pen- 
sion from France. The accomplished pope, Leo X., now making 
peace with France Europe enjoyed tranquility for a season; 1515. 

In the line of the German emperors we have given we find Fred- 
eric III. to have been the last who took the trouble to go to Rome 
to be crowned by the pope. In his reign, which is set down for 
the period, 1440-1493, Constantinople was captured by the Turks. 
Previous to 1453 it was felt throughout Europe that another cru- 
sade was necessary to resist their aggressions, and, although assem- 
blies were summoned for the purpose of arming Europe against 
them nothing effectual was done. John Hunniades, general of the 
Hungarians, compelled them to raise the siege of Belgrade, which 
they had invested. 

The date given for the crowning of Charlemagne as King of 
Lombard}^ by the Pope is given as 774 and that of the accession of 
Frederic III. as 1440 A. D., which leaves the interval, 1440-774, 
of years during which those Caesars of the western empire revived, 
in effect acknowledged the superiority of the pope by receiving 
their crown or emblem of authority from him as his gift. I do 
not suppose that all the intervening emperors between Charlemagne 
and Frederic III. were crowned by the pope; but there were none 
before and none after, that I am aware of excepting Napoleon I., 
who was, indeed, a marked character in history if not in prophecy. 
The number, therefore, given in the last verse of Rev. XIII. may 
be thought to measure the time in years during which those em- 
perors would acknowledge the supremacy of the bishop of Rome 
over all earthly potentates. Although the pope's superiority was 
in the case of many emperors in this interval disputed, yet the gen- 
eral principle of the pope's supremacy may be thought to have 
been granted for that period. This interval, you perceive, is also 
included within that given in the prophecy Rev. XIII., 1-11, to 
the Roman empire whose seat was at Constantinople; so that if 
this second prophecy, Rev. XIII., 11-18, refer to only a part of 



154 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOG1ES, ETC. 

the whole Roman empire geometrically, it referred also to only a 
part of it temporally, that is, it referred to part of the area and 
part of the time, which the whole Christian Roman empire covered ; 
for we find the capital of the Christian Roman empire was taken by 
the Turks in the reign of the last of those German emperors who 
received their crown from the popes. From this time forward 
those western emperors, seeing all that remained of the Christian 
Roman empire now in the power of the Turks, doubtless concluded 
they should act more independently, in fully representing the Ro- 
man emperor proper, seeing they were naturally considered as their 
nearest representative now existing. Henceforth they seemed to 
have acknowledged the pope rather as a spiritual father than a 
supreme monarch, although the pope's own temporal sovereignty 
was very strong after 1500. 

" The successors of Charlemagne and the Othos were chosen be- 
yond the Rhine, in a national diet; but these princes were content 
with the humble title of Kings of Germany and Italy till they had 
crossed the Alps to receive their imperial crown from the hands of 
their spiritual Father upon the banks of the Tiber. At some dis- 
tance from the city their approach was saluted by a long procession 
of the clergy and people with palms and crosses; the royal oath to 
maintain the liberties of Rome was thrice repeated, at the bridge, at 
the gate, and on the stairs of the Vatican; and in their distribution 
of customary donative, the emperor feebly imitated the munificence 
of the first Csesars. In the church of St. Peter the coronation was 
performed by the Pope, and the public consent was declared in the 
acclamations : " Long life and victory to our Lord the Pope ! Long 
life and victory to our Lord the Emperor ! Long life and victory to 
the Roman and Teutonic armies ! " The names of Caesar and Au- 
gustus, the laws of Constantine and Justinian, the example of 
Charlemagne and Otho, established the supreme dominion of the 
emperors ; their title and image was engraved on the papal coins, 
and their jurisdiction over Rome was marked by the sword of justice 
which they delivered to the prefect of the city. The order of the 
coronation was, however, often disturbed by the seditious clamors 
of the Romans, who encountered their sovereign as a foreign invader ; 
his departure was always speedy and often shameful ; and in his ab- 
sence, sometimes during along reign, his authority was often insult- 
ed, and his name perhaps forgotten. As we have before remarked, 
Frederick III. was the last German Emperor who presented himself 
at Rome to receive the imperial crown, which he did in 1452, the 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 155 

year before Constantinople was taken by the Turks. After this the 
civil authority of the Popes became more independently exercised, 
and the Romans were freed from the immediate presence of their 
German lords, though they frequently afterwards had need of their 
assistance to quell domestic disturbances, and protect them against 
foreign foes. 

Of Eome's two sovereigns, the emperor reigned by the right of 
conquest ; but the authority of the Vicar of Christ was founded on 
the soft though more solid basis of public opinion and habit; and 
he began to exercise over the Romans a similar influence to that 
which he did over the nations of Europe, when by his thunders frorn 
the Vatican he created, judged and desposed the rulers of the earth; 
nor did the proudest of Rome's sons feel themselves disgraced by 
submitting to the rule of a priest whose foot was kissed by kings." * 

After the accession of the " House of Valois " to the throne of 
France in 1328 A. D., the French history is largely interwoven 
with that of Norman England ; the kings of England from this time 
or later styling themselves 'Kings of England or of Great Britain, 
France and Ireland,' to which title they added, after Henry VIII., 
'Defender of the Faith.' 

We will, now, therefore, give attention to the rise of the Anglo- 
Saxon-Norman Monarchy. 

England, so called, is one of the nations which arose on the ruins 
of the Roman empire. When Alaric with his Goths threatened Rome 
the emperor Honorius had Stiticho withdraw the legions from 
Britain which were left to guard the wall of Severus. On their de- 
parture the Scots and Picts from the north of the wall invaded and 
distressed the south Britons. In about 428 A. D. they applied to 
Honorius for means of protection and once or twice that emperor 
sent some aid: but at length he wrote them absolving them from 
their allegiance and exhorting them to defend themselves. The 
flower of their war-like youth had been accustomed to enlist in the 
legions and had fallen far from home in the battles of the empire ; 
and the Britons, as a consequence, had sunk into effeminite depend- 
ence. In a convention brought together for the selection of a sov- 
ereign, who would take among them the place of the Roman au- 
thority they at length fixed upon Vortigern. Their enemies from 
the north were now at their doors and they agreed upon the dan- 
gerous experiment of asking in foreign aid. At their invitation 
1,500 Saxons from the mouth of the Elbe appeared in three galleys 
at the island of Thanet, under the brothers, Hengist and Horsa in 

• Gibbon: " Deo. and Fall." 



156 CKEATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

449 A. D. These Yortigern took into his pay and they proceeded 
against the Caledonians whom they defeated at Stamford. 

The Saxons now claimed they needed a stronger force ; and next 
there arrived sixteen ships, containing besides Saxons and Danes, 
a portion of another tribe, the Angles, from whom England de- 
rives its name. In this fleet, which arrived in Britain in the year 

450 A. D. came Rowena, the niece of Hengist, whom Vortigern 
married. Even after the Caledonians were driven out the Saxons 
continued to draw over large numbers of their countrymen. The 
Britons, becoming alarmed, compelled Vortigern to yield his place 
to his son Vortimer, and they perceiving the Saxons to appropriate 
the island too fast, endeavored to drive them out but without suc- 
cess. Hengist made himself king of Kent, which was the first 
of the seven or eight kingdoms which the Saxons founded in 
Britain. 

Hengist, having killed^many of the nobles of the island through 
treachery, was feared for his cruelty. The Britons then raised to 
their supreme command king Arthur, heretofore sovereign of Corn- 
wall and Devon, who with his " Knights of the Round Table " per- 
formed prodigies of valor. The period of the establishment of 
the Saxon kingdoms in Britain, embracing one hundred and thirty- 
two years, (o#6 — 454=132) was a period of distressing warfare. 
At the end of this period the Saxons remained in possession of the 
most cultivable parts of South Britain, while the natives were 
driven to the mountains of Wales and Cornwall, to the north-east- 
ern coast of the island, and elsewhere. During these distressing 
wars a part of the Britons passed over to the continent and settled 
in the Gaulic province of Armorica, to which they gave the name 
of Bret ague or Brittany. 

The kingdoms of the Saxon Heptarchy in the order of their es- 
tablishment are as follows : — 

1. Kent: comprising Kent and part of Surrey; founded by 

Hengist: continued 454 — 823=369 years. 

2. Sussex (South Saxons): comprising Sussex and a part of 

Surre}^: continued 499 — 721=222 years. 

3. Wessex (West Saxons) : founded by Cerdic, a Saxon general 

King Arthur with his knights defeated this general at Baden 
Hill near Bath, killing, it is said, " four hundred with his 
own hand." Founded 509. 

4. Essex (East Saxons): comprising Middlesex and London. 

Continued 530—823=293 years. 



PAPAL- GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 157 

5. Bernisia : comprising Northumberland, Durham, and a por- 

tion of Scotland. This kingdom was founded by Ina in 
547-559 A. D. 

6. Deira: Lancashire and York, founded by Ella in 560 A. D. 

7. East Anglia: A small portion of the eastern coast, called also 

Angle-land, from whence the name England. 

8. Mercia : This, which was understood as an eighth kingdom, 

was formed from a part of Deira in 586 A. D.* 



* Speaking of the period 560 A. D., Turner, in Ms history of the Anglo-Saxons, Vol. II, 215, 
says: "One Jnte, three Saxon and three Angle Kingdoms were thus established in 
Britain by the year 560; in Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, Bernicia and Deira, 
Another Angle Kingdom was about twenty- six years after added in Mercia, which became in 
time more powerful and celebrated than any other, except that of the West Saxons which at 
last conquered it. This kingdom of Mercia made the eighth, which these bold adventurers suc- 
ceeded in founding." — " Its foundatiou is dated in 586, but although Crida is named as its 
first sovereign, yet it was his grandson, Penda, who is represented as having first separated 
it from the dominion of the northern Angles." 

The general understanding as derived from the records transmitted by the monkish historians 
of the Anglo-Saxons has been hitherto that Wessex, or the West Saxons, as given down here 
by Turner, conquered the Octarchy and united its sovereignties in the person of Egbert, its 
King. But in this whole account there is more of romance than real history. The truth ap- 
pears clear enough to him who impartially studies and criticises these different accounts that 
the West Saxons, with the Kingdoms of Kent, East Anglia, etc., were conquered by Offa 
(i.e., Penred) King of Mercia; and that from the family of the Angles descended, in 
the male line, Alfred the great, who is to be reckoned the first king of the Anglo-Saxons. 
Mercia was distinctively an Anglic kingdom and hence the natural explanation why the 
country was ultimately called England (Angle-land) rather than Saxon-land, which it would 
have naturally been had any of the Saxon kingdoms triumphed over the whole. For, if the 
Saxons had triumphed, it is plain the country would have been the Saxons' land, not that of 
the Angles, who, on this supposition, would be subject to the Saxons. The following from 
Turner 1, 217-18, fairly indicates the locations of the several kingdoms of the Octarchy. 

" The Jutes possessed Kent, the Isle of Wight and that part of the coast of Hampshire which 
fronts it. 

The Saxons were distinguished from their situation, into South Saxons, who peopled 
Sussex. East Saxons, who were in Essex, Middlesex, and the south part of Hertfordshire. 
West Saxons in Surrey, Hampshire (the site of the Jutes excepted)Berks, Wilts, Dorset 
Somerset, Devon and that part of Cornwall which the Britons were unable to retain. 

The Angles were divided into 

East Angles in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, the Isle of Ely, and (it should seem) part of 
Bedfordshire. 

Middle Angles in Leicestershire, which appertained to Mercia. 

The Mercians divided by the Trent into 

South Mercians in the counties of Lincoln, Northampton, Rutland. Huntingdon, the north 
parts of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, Bucks, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, 
Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Staffordshire', Shropshire ; and into 

North Mercians, in the counties of Chester, Derby and Nottingham. 

The Northumbrians who were 

The Deiri in Lancaster, York, Westmoreland, Cumberland, Durham. 

The Bernicians in Northumberland and the south of Scotland, between the Tweed and the 
Firth of Forth." 

The map shows the kingdom of Mercia to have occupied the centre of the Octarchy and to 
have had quite an extensive area. 

To terminate the incursions of the Welsh into his territories " Offa annexed the eastern 
regions of Wales, as far as the Wye, to Mercia, planted them with Anglo-Saxons, and sepa- 
rated them from the Britons by a large trench and rampart, extending from the aestuary of 
the Dee to the mouth of the Wye. It was carried through marshes and over mountains and 
rivers for one hundred miles, and was long celebrated under the name of Clnudh Offa or Offa's 
Dyke. Its remains and direction are yet visible. It was used forages afterwards as the 
boundary which determined the confines of England and Wales; a boundary jealously guarded 



158 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOIiOGrES, ETC. 

The monarchies of the Octarchy were elective rather than he- 
reditary ; the king's power consisted in his carrying out the wishes 
of his nobles and people, who expressed their will in assemblies 
called Witall or Wittegemot. Ina, king of the West Saxons, was 
the first to assemble this body, which is considered the original of 
the British Parliament. These kingdoms also appear to have held 
themselves together by a kind of confederation, one of their 
sovereigns presiding over the whole, whose office was called Bret- 
walda, i.e., ruler of Britain. So complete became the sway of 
the Saxons in the island that their language became also preva- 
lent ; about three-fourths of the words in common use in the En- 
glish language being of Anglo-Saxon origin. 

It was in the time of the Heptarchy that Augustin, with his 
forty missionaries, came from Rome to preach Christianity in 
Britain ; but that Christianity was not unknown in the island long 
before it is sufficient to say that St. Alban, England's first martyr, 
suffered in the persecutions of Diocletian, a century and an half 
before the Saxons came into the island under Hengist. The eight 
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms became united into one kingdom of En- 
gland under Alfred the great in about 890-900 A. D., their con- 
solidation under Egbert i.e. Kenwulf in 827 being only nominal. 

The council of the Wittagemot was composed of about thirty 
persons, considered the most powerful in the kingdom, whether lay- 
men or ecclesiastics ; and doubtless rather hereditary than elective. 
To all laws their consent was necessary ; and that their laws indi- 
cate the barbarity of their times and manners may be seen in what 
follows : For murder, offenders were fined in proportion to the 
rank of the person murdered. For a king the sum was very large ; 
for an earl or bishop about one-fifth as much ; for a serf, less than 
a hundreth. 

The reign of Egbert, i.e. Kenwulf, successor of Off a was much 
disturbed by attacks from the Norman sea rovers. He gained two 



with the most rigorous penalties." — " Offa was distinguished beyond the other Anglo-Saxon 
kings who had preceded him in the Octarchy by commencing an intercourse with the continent. 
He had correspondence with Charlemagne, which does credit to the Frankish sovereign and 
to himself. In one letter Charlemagne communicates to him with perceptible exultation his 
success in procuring the continental Saxons to adopt Christianity. In another the Frankish 
emperor promises security to all pilgrims, and his especial protection and legal interference 
in behalf of all commercial adventurers, on their paying the requisite duties. He greets OfFa 
with expressions of friendship and sends him a belt, an Hungarian sword and two silken cloaks. 

A discord of some moment interrupted this amity. All intercourse between the two countries 
was reciprocally interdicted; but the quarrel is not stated to have lasted long. Offa had also 
a quarrel with the pope." Id. Vol. I, 272-3. 

Now whether or not there be any truth in these accounts of Offa's correspondence with 
Charlemagne they may doubtless be taken as fairly indicating the time when Offa flourished. 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 159 

successive victories over them in battle, but their ships brought 
new swarms. 

The nation experienced their ravages still more in the reigns of his 
successors Ceolwolf and Ethelwolf . Bagnor Ladbrog, a famous sea 
king, had been killed in England by Ella, one of the Saxon princes ; 
and to avenge his death as well as for the purposes of plunder, these 
people, commanded by the sons of Ladbrog, again united their forces 
to ravage England. Landing in great force they plundered and 
desolated the country, making prisoners of the inhabitants, and, 
when attacked by the English, retreating with their booty to their 
ships. JEthelwolf was succeeded by his son iEthelbert, and he 
by his younger brother iEthelfred, a name variously written 
Ethelred and Alfred. The latter in his youth, by assiduous appli- 
cation, attained to considerable learning. After he became king, 
the Danes becoming more formidable than ever, he attacked and 
gained some advantages over them. They stipulated to retire, but 
receiving reinforcements they violated their treaty. In one year 
the young king fought with them eight battles ; but they swarmed 
on the coast in still greater numbers. 

After passing through much dangerous experience with the 
Danes, experience which some have called romantic, Alfred granted 
the Danes permission to settle in Northumberland and east Anglia, 
on condition of their being governed by his laws and embracing 
Christianity. They accepted the conditions and were baptized, the 
king himself standing godfather for Guthrun, their chief. Alfred's 
civil and military institutions have acquired for him the admiration 
of posterity. His love of literature manifested in youth continued 
through life, and though burdened and harassed with the cares 
of government and with vexatious wars he yet found leisure at the 
age of thirty-eight to write several reputable works in the Latin 
language. 

To him the University of Oxford owes its foundation ; and he 
compiled and perhaps partially originated a system of jurispru- 
dence, which is the foundation of English common law. He orig- 
inated a navy, which is considered as the beginning of the greatest 
naval power the world has ever known. It was, in short, Alfred 
who laid the foundation of that remarkable institution called the 
British monarchy. If he had fought fifty-six battles his wars were 
mainly those of defense and usually unmarked by acts of cruelty; 
and if he were guilty of some such cruel acts as made him be com- 
pared to Charlemagne in the conduct of that monarch towards the 



160 CEEATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Saxons, it is remarkable that not many historians have thought fit 
to dwell on them.* 

History maintains the three immediate successors of Alfred to 
have been able men and to have held the government with a firm 
hand. Edward the elder, the son and successor of Alfred, built 
many fortresses and subjugated the Danes. Athelstan, natural son 
and successor of Edward, " who is much renowned in history for 
the victories he obtained over these and other barbarians by whom 
the kingdom was assailed; and Edmund the elder, who conquered 
Northumberland from the Britons and bestowed it on Malcolm (III) 
king of Scotland, on condition that he should do homage to him 
and defend the northern frontier from the Danes." 

The reign of Edred, brother and successor of Edmund the elder, 
who were both sons of Athelstan, is memorable for the establish- 
ment of monasteries in England; and for the influence which Dun- 
stan, abbot of Glastonbury, exercised on this superstitious monarch. 

To Edred succeeded his son Edwy at the age of seventeen. Ele- 
gant in person and ardent in his affections the beautiful Elgiva, 
his second cousin, captivated his youthful heart; and he married 
her contrary to the church's decree, which prohibited marriage be- 
tween persons of this degree of affinity. Dunstan having de- 
nounced his act and insulted him he banished him from the realm ; 
but the spirit of fanaticism, the prevailing spirit of that age, was 

* Alfred's character has been highly spoken of even by foreigners. Voltaire in his Essai les 
Moenrs speaks of him in the highest terms; as does Herder in his '• Outlines of a Philosophy 
of the History of Man." pgs. 547-8. The celebrated Mirabeau, in a " Discourse Preliminaire," 
published under his name to a translation of Mrs. Macauley's History, draws, with a creditable 
liberality, a parallel between Alfred and Charlemagne, and gives the superiority to the Anglo- 
Saxon. 

Speaking of Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, and grandson of Alfred, who conquered 
the Danes, Northumbrians, &c, Turner I, 493^, says: " Northumbria and Wales fell into the 
power of Athelstan by this victory. It effectually secured to him the throne of his ancestors, 
and the subjugation of the Anglo-Danes was so decisive that he received the fame of being the 
founder of the English monarchy. The claims of Egbert to this honor are unquestionably 
surreptitious. The competition can only be between Alfred and Athelstan. The truth seems 
to be that Alfred was the first monarch of the Anglo-Saxons, but Athelstan was the first 
monarch of England." The account given of Egbert, king of Wessex, conquering the whole 
country is not so much " surreptitious," as here according to Turner, as it is fictitious. It may, 
however, possibly be thought of as a kind of adumbration of the substantial conquest of the 
country by Offa and his house of Mercia. For Ingulph who lived at the time of the Norman 
conquest in his Chronicle of the monastery of Croyland in Mercia says that Offa, dying in 794, 
was succeeded by his son Egbert, who died the same year, and was succeeded by 
Kenwulph. But the Egbert and Cenwulph referred to here are names safely referable to the 
same man, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle spelling the first name Egfert and Turner, Ecgfrid. Of 
course the Egbert or CenwulrJh referred to here might now be called King of Wessex as well 
as King of Mercia ; for I can see that as early as 787 Wessex had become subject to Mercia. The 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has also Egfert lo immediately succeed Offa in Mercia; and about the 
time of his accession the historians have Egbert, King of Wessex, to depart for the continent, not 
from Wessex, but from the palace of Offa in Mercia where he had spent some time previously? 
It then has him to spend 13 years with Charlemagne in a very romantic way, after which he re- 
turns to Anglo-Saxon-land in the year 800, and has a remarkable career as King of Wessex. 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 161 

on the side of the monk. Odo, then archbishop of Canterbury, 
tore Elgiva from her husband, and caused her face to be scarred 
with a red hot iron, in order to destroy the beauty which had en- 
snared the king. 

The unhappy wife escaping from her cruel persecutors and re- 
turning to her husband, they overtook and murdered. The 
wretched Edwy they dethroned; who, finding himself forsaken by 
his people, and excommunicated by the relentless clergy, soon 
rested from his miseries in death. 

To Edwy succeeded his brother Edgar, a boy of thirteen years 
of age; and Duostan, who had now returned to the kingdom, 
managed the affairs of government in his name. This monk ac- 
tively opposed the marriage of the secular clergy and obliged great 
numbers of them to separate from their families. He was also active 
in endowing monasteries, and in thus consigning to inactivity many 
men who were better adapted to an active life and whose services 
the country needed. As Edgar grew up to manhood he perceived 
the difficulties of his situation and became in time a very able mind ; 
but his character presents us greatness without virtue. The favor 
of the monks he preserved by flattery, at the same time that he vio- 
lated, in the pursuit of the coarser pleasures, the laws human and 
divine. In other respects, however, he evinced very creditable 
energy. Following the example of the great Alfred he maintained 
a powerful navy, which he divided into three squadrons, command- 
ing each to make by turns the circuit of his dominions, thus keep- 
ing the seamen in practice and able to cope with the northmen.* 
For his second wife Edgar married Elfrida, a lady of rare beauty, 
the daughter of a nobleman. The story of how he came by her is 
as follows: He had heard of her beauty and sent Ethelwold, his 
favorite, to see if her charms deserved the praise bestowed upon 
them. Ethelwold himself having become enamored of her, decep- 
tively told the king that report had exaggerated her beauty, but 
that she was a rich heiress and would be a desirable match for himself. 
Edgar heartily undertook to promote the union, but, after the mar- 
riage took place, beginning to suspect treachery, he determined 
to visit the castle of Ethelwold. The husband, fearing what 
might happen, confessed to his wife the fault his passion had led 
him to commit, and besought her to conceal her beauty as much as 
possible. But Elfrida, on the contrary, took care to attire herself 

* With Dunstan Edgar cordially co-operated, and In 964, boasted he had founded 47 monas- 
teries. In 972, according to historians, he had 8 subject kings row him in a vessel on tbe river 
Dee, be himself holding the helm. 
11 



162 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

in the most becoming manner. With her appearance the monarch 
was charmed ; he slew her husband with his own hand and married 
her. She who had thus connived at the destruction of her husband 
carried dissension and disaster into the royal family, for as it af- 
terwards proved, she was more distinguished for her beauty than 
for her virtue. 

On the death of Edgar, Edward II., his son by his first marriage, 
was raised to the throne by Dunstan, in opposition to the wishes of 
Elfrida, who desired that her own son, Ethelred, should receive the 
crown. To this end she afterwards compassed his death, thus pro- 
curing for her son the crown of Angleland and for Edward II. 
everlasting honor in the surname of " the martyr," which then at- 
tached to his name. 

In the reign of Ethelred, the son of Edgar, the Danes with fresh 
hopes and recruited strength again entered England, and the pusil- 
lanimous monarch purchased their departure with money. To the 
Danes this was, of course, a lure, and, on the part of the king, an 
acknowledgment of weakness. But as if to add a most effective 
inducement to the myriads of the northern horde to invade his do- 
minions the shortsighted and cruel monarch gave orders for a gen- 
eral massacre of all the Danes in his dominions, which order was 
executed with remarkable barbarity. Among the number slain was 
G-unhilda, sister of Sweyn, king of Denmark, a Christian princess 
married to an English nobleman. This lady was compelled to wit- 
ness the dying agonies of her children as they were put to death 
before her face; after which she was herself inhumanly slain. 
Sweyn having heard of this massacre could with difficulty control 
his wrath. Having sailed with a powerful armament from Den- 
mark, he landed in the west of England and carried fire and sword 
throughout the land. The monarch of England fled to Robert, 
now Duke of Normandy, whose sister Emma he had married for his 
second wife. This Emma, I may now anticipate, was aunt to 
William the Conqueror, and through her was his only claim to the 
crown of England. Sweyn did, in effect, conquer England; but 
died before he had time to establish himself therein. It was, how- 
ever, found to be for the new possessors not a bed of roses ; the 
friends of the Saxon dynasty were yet powerful: Ethelred returned 
to England and managed to cope pretty respectably with Canute, 
the son and successor of Sweyn. His death left his eldest son, 
Edmund Ironside, to prosecute the war. Edmund, however, soon 
found himself much weakened and impeded in his operations 



PAPAL- GEKMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 163 

against the enemy by the machinations of his own subjects. De- 
feated in battle, he was compelled to relinquish part of his terri- 
tories; Canute received the northern territories while he was left 
in possession of the south. But this virtuous monarch, who was 
worthy of a better fate, was assassinated by two of his rebellious 
subjects in the interest of Canute, who now seizing on the domin- 
ions of Edmund, became sovereign of the entire kingdom. To 
strengthen his title he married Emma, the widow of Ethelred, and 
sister of Kobert of Normandy as before mentioned. 

On his establishment as sovereign of the kingdom Canute sent 
back part of his forces into Denmark and restored the Saxon law 
and customs. Soon after he returned to Denmark, when he under 
took an expedition to Sweden and Norway and conquered these 
countries. He then came to reside in England. 

Canute in his mature years, becoming weary of the adulation of 
his flatterers, who, in their poems and otherwise, pronounced him 
omnipotent, wanted to prove them, and to this end proceeded as 
follows: He ordered his chair placed by the sea-shore, and sitting 
therein, he commanded the advancing tide to stop: but, not at all 
heeding his orders, it moved onward and wet his robe, when turn- 
ing to his flatterers he sternly rebuked them. 

After Canute's death his sons Harold and Hardicanute successively 
obtained the crown. On the death of the latter the English threw 
off the Danish yoke, and recalled Edward surnamed, by reason of 
his piety, " the Confessor." He was son of Ethelred and Emma 
and had been under the protection of his maternal uncle during 
the twenty-five or thirty years of the rule of the Danes. Edward's 
reign was disturbed by rebellions among his nobility, some of whom 
had themselves aspirations for the crown. 

The death of Edward, the Confessor, who was the last of the 
Saxon kings, descended of Cerdic, left the succession to the En- 
glish throne open to dispute. A claimant presented himself in the 
person of Edgar, surnamed Atheling, (illustrious) a son of Edmund 
Ironside; and another was William, duke of Normandy, a son of 
duke Robert, the brother of Emma. While the decision of the 
question was yet in suspense, Harold, the son of the powerful earl 
Godwin, assumed the crown and obtained the nation's allegiance. 
William of Normandy, becoming apprised of this, applied to pope 
Alexander for permission to conquer England. This the pope 
granted and sent him besides his blessing with a ring containing one 
of St. Peter's hairs. William, distinguished for courage, magnan- 



164 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

mity and military skill ; his court thronged with the youth of dif- 
ferent countries eager for military enterprise, now, on the arrival 
of the pope's permission and blessing, no longer hesitates, but em- 
barks his army and lands at Peyesney. In the north was at this 
time Harold where he had just defeated a force of Norwegians, 
when he learned that the duke of Normandy had landed with a 
powerful army. Borne as it were on eagle's wings by thoughts of 
their recent victory both he and his army hastened to the south. 
Although dissuaded from the undertaking by experienced military 
skill ; although depending upon an inferior military force, he ven- 
tured at Hastings, upon the issue of a single battle, his kingdom; 
the battle he lost and with it his crown and his life. The battle of 
Hastings, which decided the fate of the old Saxon dynasty in En- 
gland was fought in 1066 A. D., six hundred and sixteen years after 
the Saxons may be said to have got a footing in large numbers in 
the island in 452 A. D., two hundred and thirty-nine years after 
the union of the Heptarchic kingdom into one under the king of 
Mexico m 827, A. D. ; and four hundred and sixty-eight years after 
the foundation of the Archbishoprick of Canterbury in the person of 
the monk August in. For the date given for the incoming of the 
Saxons and Angles to South Britain we have the highest authority. 
From my " Critical Review of the History of the Scotts or Gaels " 
pp. 43-4, 1 extract as follows : " According to Beda " (vol. II. , com- 
plete wks. ) " from 385 to 416 the Picts and Scotts ravage South Bri- 
tain when the Romans, who had already evacuated the island, upon 
earnest request of the Britons, sent thither to their assistance a le- 
gion, who, having worsted the Picts and Scotts in battle return to 
Rome," — " On this," i. e., on the advice of the Romans, the Bri- 
tons built a sod- wall across the island (A. D. 416), which, how- 
ever, did not avail to keep out the northern hordes." " Upon the 
invitation of the Britons the Angles and Saxons came into the isl- 
and, commencing 447 to 449, A. D." For this long period, there- 
fore, did the Saxons hold dominion in South Britain, unless perhaps 
for the intervals of thirty years during which Sweyn, and his son 
and two grandsons held it; and they may, on the whole, be said to 
have been a race of strong, brave men, somewhat as the Scotch, 
presenting to the Norman armed hordes, who infected their coast in 
those ages, at least as bold a front and as effectual a resistance as 
did the race of Charlemagne in old Gaul. 

On the conclusion of the battle of Hastings William proceeded 
to London, but while on his way he was met by a deputation, which 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 165 

offered him the crown. This deputation was accompanied by Edgar 
Atheling, with the two noblemen, Edwin andMorcar, who had pro- 
claimed as king this scion of the Saxon line. In six months after 
William visited Normandy, but the rapacity of the army he left in 
Britain produced a revolt, which induced him to hasten his return, 
when he found that the insurrection was headed by the most power- 
ful nobles in the kingdom, aided by the kings of Scotland and Den- 
mark. In the rebellion, which he soon effectually crushed, he found 
pretenses to enrich his Norman followers, bestowing on them the 
estates of the now vanquished rebels. 

After the manner of the tenure long established in >rmandy, 
William now introduced the feudal system into England, dividing 
the kingdom into large landed estates, or baronies, which were 
distributed among the Norman chiefs, none of the English being 
permitted to hold those of the first rank. After this time, there- 
fore, a nobleman was known to be of Norman descent, and the 
serfs or villains to be the descendants of the old inhabitants of the 
country. 

William caused a survey of all the lands in the kingdom to be 
made and recorded in that tome called "the Doomsday Book." 
He established a certain martial law throughout the island by oblig- 
ing the people to extinguish their lights at the ringing of the curfew 
or evening bell. 

On William's death his dominions were divided between his three 
sons. England he gave to William Rufus: between Robert and 
Henry he divided his continental possessions, Robert receiving the 
larger share. Discontents between the brothers resulted in wars; 
but Robert, at length, resolving to depart in the first crusade and 
to devote himself to the holy enterprise of freeing the Holy Land 
from the power of the Mahometans, mortgaged his dukedom of 
Normandy to his brother William, for a sum of money sufficient to 
equip, transport and maintain his army for the enterprise : 1096-1097 
A. D. The first crusade, as is known, was signally successful in 
wresting Jerusalem from the Moslems and in establishing a Chris- 
tian kingdom there. 

On the death of William II, king of England, which occurred 
during the absence of his brother Robert in the Holy Land (1100) 
his younger brother, Henry, usurped the sovereignty, both in En- 
gland and France. To render his government secure he courted 
the favor of his subjects. To the English he promised, though he 
failed to fulfill, to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor; and 



166 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

whether through state policy or a higher motive he married Matilda, 
called the good queen Maud, a daughter of Margaret, queen of 
Malcolm III, of Scotland, who was a descendant of the Saxon kings. 

On Robert's return from the Holy Land he hastened to England 
to claim his inheritance ; but was induced by Henry to agree to a 
treaty, by which he received the dukedom of Normandy, leaving 
Heury in possession of the kingdom of England. The brother who 
outlived the other was to inherit the dominion of the deceased. 
But the jealousy and ambition of the brothers did not permit them 
to remain at peace, and Henry soon possessed himself by force of 
Robert's dominions, made his brother a prisoner for life, and in- 
humanly deprived him of his eyes. 

Prince "William, the only son of Henry I, who through his mother 
Maud was descended from the Saxon kings, was shipwrecked and 
lost on his passage from Normandy to England, and with him 
perished his half sister and one hundred and forty young nobles 
who bore him company. It is said that after this Henry never 
smiled. He then convoked a council of the prelates and nobles 
whom he had take an oath of fealty to his daughter Matilda, whom 
he married to Greoffry Plantagenet, the Earl of Anjou. On the 
birth to her of a son and heir, afterwards Henry II, the king pro- 
cured from the nobles and prelates the renewal of the oath, extend- 
ing it to her son. In 1135, after a reign of 35 years disturbed by 
wars and disorders, Henry died, and was succeeded on the throne of 
England by Stephen, earl of Boulogne, a grandson of the conqueror 
in the maternal line. He had been the first to take the oath of 
fealty to Matilda and her son; but before she could arrive in En- 
gland had himself crowned king by the archbishop of Canterbury. 
Civil war now began to rage between the parties of the adverse 
claimants. After many years of alternate success, when the son of 
Matilda had arrived at age, in a council of nobles and prelates, called 
together for the purpose, it was determined that Stephen should 
retain the crown during his life and be succeeded by Henry. On 
Stephen's death in 1154 Henry Plantagenet, the son of Matilda, 
was crowned king of England under the title of Henry II. He is 
said to have been the most powerful monarch of his age ; for be- 
sides the sovereignty of England and Normandy he inherited from 
his father Anjou and Maine; and as the dower of Eleanor, the 
divorced queen of Louis VII of France, whom he married, he re- 
ceived Guienne and Poictou: in 1172 he invaded and conquered 
Ireland, which before his time had been governed by its native kings. 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 167 

When Henry II. came to the throne the English clergy were ex- 
empt from trial before the common courts of justice, and it was 
noticed that the ecclesiastical courts, to which their cases were 
amenable, sometimes passed over their crimes with impunity. 
Henry resolving to effect a change in this quarter to such a degree 
as to bring the ecclesiastical into subordination to the civil, to this 
end elevated to the See of Canterbury Thomas a' Becket, who 
from the intimacy which had existed between them, and from his 
previous knowledge of his character he thought would prove sub- 
servient to his will. But, having been elevated to the office of 
the second person in the kingdom, Becket insensibly appeared in 
the eyes of Henry to assume a remarkable self-importance. This, 
however, did not appear so to all observers; for the habits of ab- 
stemiousness practiced by Becket, in regard to the use of food, 
drink and clothing, as well as his practice of self-laceration and of 
washing the feet of thirteen beggars every day gave to him in the 
judgment of the people a character for extraordinary sanctity. 
This character, established at large, Becket opposed the authority 
of the king. 

Henry in 1164 convoked a council " at Clarendon, wherein laws 
were passed declaring that priests should be amenable to the civil 
tribunals, without appeal to the pope, and that no edict of the pope 
shall be binding in England without the sanction of the king." 
Becket having resisted these laws was arrested. Henry arraigned 
him for the rents and profits he had received while he was chancel- 
lor. Becket appealed to Rome and obtained the support of Alex- 
ander III. Meantime the king obliged him to leave England and 
for a time he was entertained by the king of France. Further to 
oppose the practices of the church Henry suspended the payment 
of certain church revenues and concluded an alliance with Frederic 
Barbarossa, who was at war with the pope. 

An agreement was at length in some way effected between Henry 
and Becket and the latter was restored to his bishoprick. He en- 
tered England after the manner of a conqueror, in a kind of semi- 
regal style. But, soon after, news having been brought to Henry 
in Normandy of Becket' s notification of three of the principal En- 
glish prelates of their excommunication by the pope because of 
certain acts of obedience to the king, Henry exclaimed, " Will my 
servants still leave me exposed to the insolence of this ungrateful 
and imperious priest?" Upon which four of his knights, named 
Tracy, Morville, Britts and Fitz Urse repaired to Canterbury and 



168 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

assassinated Becket in his church during the evening service. 
They must have proceeded to this act, however, without Henry's 
knowledge; for the news of the murder is said to have filled him 
with consternation. He lost no time in making his peace with the 
pope and such concessions to the church as in the lifetime of Becket 
he would not have made. He obtained from Pope Gregory VIII. 
absolution and made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the murdered 
prelate, who was canonized: So great was the fame of the mar- 
tyred saint that 100,000 pilgrims are said to have visited his tomb 
in one year. 

Domestic dissensions caused much bitterness to Henry's old age. 
His sons were instigated by the wily king of France to take arms 
against him. Upon his father's refusal to give him the govern- 
of Normandy Henry, the eldest, rebelled. Notwithstanding their 
father's liberality to them in the days gone by Richard and Geoffry 
joined with their brother and the confederacy was enlarged by the 
accession thereto of William, the king of Scotland. " The English 
dominions in France were for two years the theater of war between 
the contending parties." A peace was at length arranged and the 
princes pardoned; but soon after, Richard, now the eldest son, re- 
belled and united with the king of France. These troubles, together 
with the sore disappointment of finding himself deserted by his 
youngest and favorite son John, brought Henry the sooner to his 
death. There must have been a cause for the course of disobedi- 
ence taken by all his children ; and it may have been truthfully said 
that " to Henry's want of conjugal fidelity and lawless loves may be 
traced many of his troubles." 

Richard I., Cceur de Lion, having succeeded to the throne, set 
himself to work to prepare for his crusade, in connection with 
Philip Augustus, king of France, and Frederic Barbarossa, the em- 
peror. On the day of Richard's coronation a most horrible slaugh- 
ter of the Jews took place as a sacrifice acceptable to God. In the 
different kingdoms of Europe they were without the protection of 
the laws : and at times multitudes of them fell victims to a treach- 
erous and madly fanatic populace. 

On the conclusion of the truce with Saladin, spoken of elsewhere 
Richard hastened his return to his kingdom, where the intrigues of 
his brother John and Philip Augustus rendered his presence neces- 
sary. He passed overland from Palestine, and on his arrival in 
Germany, where he traveled in disguise, he was discovered and 
made prisoner by the Duke of Austria, who for 60,000 pounds 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 169 

placed him in the hands of the emperor. In two years after the 
English gave for him to the emperor 300,000 pounds. Having ar- 
rived in England he was joyfully received by his subjects. Though 
his brother John had good cause to dread his presence yet Richard 
naturally kind to his own people, was willing to overlook his mis- 
deeds. " I freely forgive him," said he, "and I hope I may 
forget his wrongs, as soon as he will my pardon." Though a 
jovial companion and a valorous knight Richard was fierce and rash 
in conduct; he received his death wound in storming the castle of a 
rebellious subject in France. 

On the death of Richard, John, his brother, took immediate 
possession of the throne and put to death Arthur, his brother 
Geoffrey's son, who had risen as a claimant for it. For the 
murder of his nephew the king of France now deprived John of 
those possessions in that country which the English monarch was 
accustomed to hold as a fief of France; and besides this murder 
the other offenses whereof John was guilty, rendered his character 
odious to the English people. The nobility, perceiving in him such 
a character as might at some time yield up their rights without a 
struggle, organized themselves into a confederacy and demanded 
of him the restoration of their ancient laws and the redress of their 
grievances. Having brought together their armed forces at 
Runny mede, they compelled John to subscribe their great charter 
of rights called Magna Char la. The main things for which the 
charter gives security are: 1. Representation in parliament; 2. 
Trial by jury ; 3. Writs of habeas corpus. It also provides for 
the fixed and regular returns of the courts of common pleas, and 
for the safety of foreign merchants traveling in England. Stephen 
Langton, archbishop of Canterbury braved the pope's displeasure 
by being one of the foremost in procuring and afterwards in de- 
fending from the faithless attempts of John this great chart of 
English liberties. Twenty-five of the barons were named as guard- 
ians of the liberties of the kingdom to whom was committed the 
charge of seeing the provisions of the charter executed. In this 
instrument was contained the germ of English and American con- 
stitutional liberty. 

John's next step was to give his dominions to the pope, and he 
received them back as a fief of the Holy See together with absolu- 
tion from his engagements. Then putting himself at the head of 
an army of foreign mercenaries he attacked the unsuspecting 
barons, burned their castles and. laid waste their territories. The 



170 CEEATOE AND COSMOS; OE, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

barons, on their part, offered the crown to Louis, son of Philip 
Augustus of France, who entered England with another foreign 
array. But on John's death nianv of the nobles withdrew their 
support from Louis and proclaimed Henry III., the son of John, 
during whose minority the earl of Pembroke acted as regent, Hav- 
ing actively engaged his forces against Louis he compelled him to 
renounce his claim upon the throne of England. 

Henry IH. married Eleanor, the daughter of the Count of 
Provence. Having applied to the parliament for money to enable 
him to invade Prance, the barons first demanded the confirmation 
of the charter. This Henry granted. His invasion of France be- 
ing productive of no beneficial result the spirit of disaffection 
spread throughout the kingdom. Henry again renewed the great 
charter with imposing ceremonies ; but afterwards disregarding it 
a parliament was called at Oxford, which confirmed and extended 
the rights of the people. 

The barons organized against the king under the command of de 
Montfort, earl of Leicester. In the war which ensued Leicester got 
possession of the king, and for two years exercised the regal power 
in his name. Edward, Henry's eldest son, who had at first joined 
the party against his father, now took command of the royalists, 
and by his energy and valor obtained a victory over the forces of 
de Montfort at Evesham, where the last named general was slain. 
During the rei^n of Henrv III., notwithstanding the disorders 
which for some time existed, the country increased in wealth and 
extended its commerce ; the rights of the general public also be- 
came more respected, and for the first time they were represented in 
parliament. 

Prince Edward, at the summons of the pope, in the period which 
intervened between the battle of Evesham and his father's death, 
went, accompanied by his wife and a few followers upon the 
eighth crusade. 

Returning to England on his father's death, Edward conceived 
the design of reducing to the dominion of England the whole island 
of Britain. He eventually conquered the Welsh who bravely and 
long maintained their independence under their king Llewellyn, 
until this prince was killed. David, his brother, having been made 
prisoner by the English, was tried as a traitor and executed with a 
remarkable barbarity. Tradition says that Edward then convoked 
an assembly of the leaders of the Welsh and told them he would 
give them for their sovereign a prince, with whose manners no possi- 



PAPAL- GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 171 

ble fault could be found, a Welshman by birth, who could not speak 
even a word of English ; and amidst their joyful acclamations he 
produced his infant son, born in Wales, in the castle of Caernar- 
von. This was his second son, but, the oldest dying, the " Prince 
of Wales " became afterwards the title of the heir of the mon- 
archy. 

In his invasion of Scotland, which he undertook next, one of the 
most powerful opponents Edward met with was Sir William Wal- 
lace, who for a long time made good headway against the English 
forces. He was, however, at length betrayed to Edward by a pre- 
tended friend of his, named Sir John Monteith, and suffered on 
Tower Hill, at London, the cruel death of a traitor; a death, how- 
ever, which, though barbarous and ignominious was to him rather a 
glory than dishonor. 

But with Robert Bruce Edward was especially enraged. It is 
said that Edward was so enraged at his conduct that he and his son 
swore, at a military court at Westminster, never to rest till Scot- 
land was subdued. To fulfill his oath he had levied a large army 
and having proceeded with it as far as Carlisle there died. Ed- 
ward II. his son and successor either withdrew the forces his father 
had marched to the Scottish border or left them there under lieuten- 
ants, contrary to his father's dying commands. His nobles, dis- 
pleased with his retreat and with the listless way in which he spent 
time with certain favorites of his, at last worked on him so as to 
compel him to give up his listlessness and to renew the war with 
Scotland. He, therefore, invaded Scotland with an army much 
greater than Bruce had ready to oppose him. The Scots had, how- 
ever, made careful preparation for the action and had well chosen 
their ground on the memorable field of Bannockburn, in the 
county of Sterling. The armies were in sight of each other when 
the Scots knelt to implore the blessing of heaven and to receive the 
benediction of their priests. Edward who had expressed doubts as 
to whether they would abide battle, on beholding the army in this 
posture of supplication, exclaimed joyfully, '« They crave mercy." 
" It is from heaven, not from your highness," replied Umfraville, 
a Scotchman in the English service; " on this very field they will 
either win or die." This prediction was fulfilled, the English were 
defeated and driven into their own kingdom. The battle of Ban- 
nockburn is said to have been fought in 1314. Edward III. came 
to the throne on the deposition of his father in 1327, and of him it 
is not necessary to make mention until he assumed the title of king 



17£ CREATOR AST) COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

of France and invaded that country in 1339. At Helveot Sluys he 
gained an important naval battle upon which he returned to England 
to make more vigorous the preparations for another war. In this 
expedition he was successful, gaining the battle of Cressy and tak- 
ing Calais in 1346. David the son of Bruce, now finding the En- 
glish engaged in France, makes an attack upon the northern parts 
of England, but was met by an army from the south, defeated, 
taken prisoner and kept in captivity eleven years. Thus and in 
this year, 1346, was Scotland for a time subjected to the English 
Normans. 

The truce fixed upon after the fall of Calais having expired Ed- 
ward renewed the war with France. At the battle of Poictiers, the 
Black Prince, his son, defeated the French, and made John, the 
king of France, his prisoner. A treaty was now arranged by which 
the ancient English possessions and recent conquests in France 
were yielded to Edward besides a large ransom in money for the 
captive king. Edward III. improved England in several ways; but 
his foreign wars greatly impoverished it. In his old age he lived 
wretchedly, and, when he departed this life, he died miserably. 
It has been said, " His successes were a dazzling show, the evils 
which followed were a great reality." 

The ' ' Black Prince ' ' of Wales never became king ; but a state 
of gloomy discontent pervaded England when Richard II., his son, 
succeeded his grandfather, in 1377. Not only had the foreign wars 
impoverished the country, but the services ox feudalism now 
amounted to personal slavery and worse than the tyranny of the 
temporal lords was that of the lords spiritual. Besides tithes and 
perquisites the clergy, wonderful to relate, owned at this time more 
than one-half the landed property in England. 

A reformer of no mediocre ability now appeared in the person of 
John Wickliffe, born in 1324. He was educated and received dis- 
tinguished honors at Oxford. In 1370 he began to declaim openly 
against what he termed the usurped powers of the pope. Edward 
III. invited him to court and gave him the living of Lutterworth. 
When the pope commanded the English clergy to seize the arch 
heretic, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, protected him. Wick- 
liffe then came boldly before parliament with a severe paper against 
the papal infallibility and in advocacy of the use of the Scriptures 
in the vernacular tongue. He then had in mind making a transla- 
tion of the Bible. Though afterwards persecuted Wickliffe died a 
natural death at a good old age. His bones were after his death 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 173 

exhumed and burned but his doctrines germinated and bore good 
fruit in the minds and characters of men. 

Eichard II., being deposed, was succeeded on the throne, in 1399, 
by Henry, duke of Lancaster, son to John of Gaunt, son to Ed- 
ward III., who had rebelled against him. He now became Henry 
IV. Rebellions which arose in the north and in Wales he sup- 
pressed. In his reign (1401), the first laws were enacted for pun- 
ishing heretics with death. William Sawtry, a preacher, who 
followed the preachings of Wickliffe was burnt at Smithfield in 
1401, the first Christian who was put to death in England by men 
professing to be Christians for alleged errors of opinion. 

In 1413 Henry V. succeeded his father on the throne of England. 
He, in many respects, proved to be a more sensible man than his 
the youth had given promise of. But cruel laws were enacted against 
followers of Wickliffe' s doctrines : yet the sect increased and under 
the name of Lollards formed an extensive party in the kingdom. 
The proceedings against them became so intolerable as to drive 
them into open rebellion: and they being dispersed their leader, 
Sir John Oldcastle, was barbariously executed. 

Henry now renewing the claim of the Plantagenets to the crown 
of France invaded that country at the head of a powerful army, 
reduced Harfleur and terminated this campaign with the memorable 
victory of Agincourt. Through the success of his arms and by 
treaties Henry made himself master of Paris and a large portion of 
France. He married the Princess Catharine, daughter of the French 
king, and was acknowledged heir of the monarchy. Charles, king 
of France, was reinstated on the throne, but his kingship was merely 
nominal, the real authority being vested in the English sovereign. 
After Henry's death Catharine married Owen Tudor, of Wales, 
and from this connection sprang the house of Tudor. The two 
kings, Henry V. and Charles VI., died the same year; and 
although Henry VI., the son and heir of the former, was pro- 
claimed with great rejoicings both in Paris and in London, yet 
the dauphin, the son and heir to the French king, assumed the gov- 
ernment under the title of Charles VII. He was crowned at Poic- 
tiers, Rheims, the usual place being in the hands of his enemies. 
On the side of the English, and in support of the regent Bedford, 
there were the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany and against such a 
powerful force as they had at their disposition Charles, although 
he had received some reinforcements from Scotland, could not, 
with his treasury in such a depleted condition, expect to make much 



174 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

headway. At Verneuil the duke of Bedford obtained a victory 
over the united French and Scotch. Orleans, which was consid- 
ered the key to France, he then besieged and Charles hopeless of 
relieving it was about to retire, when his hopes were revived by a 
most singular event. A young female appeared before him and de- 
clared herself commissioned by God to deliver the city of Orleans 
and conduct him to Rheims, there to be crowned and anointed. 
That she was commissioned by heaven both Charles and his cour- 
tiers believed from the solemn impressions which she made upon 
them. 

A convention of the clergy was called which pronounced her rev- 
elation genuine. Clad in steel from head to foot, and bearing a 
consecrated banner, the maid of Orleans rode forth. She took 
command of the army, and, assured by a voice from God, the troops 
followed her into the city. The English pretended to laugh, but 
they were evidently under fear that perchance they were fighting 
against God. The heroine led the French to continued victories 
until she put them in possession of Orleans. 

She then demanded of the king to depart with her to Rheims to 
be crowned, and, although he thought this a mad undertaking, the 
intervening country being in the hands of the English, he obeyed. 
The English, though the duke of Bedford's orders were strict, could 
not be prevailed upon to offer her little cavalcade any resistance. 
As they passed along the cities opened their gates ; Charles entered 
Rheims and was crowned and anointed. The maid here declared 
that her mission was ended and that she should depart ; but the 
French pleaded for her stay, and she unwisely remained in the camp. 
At the siege of Compeigne she was taken captive in making a sally, 
tried by an English ecclesiastical court for the crime of sorcery and 
burnt to death. But her influence continued to be felt. Heaven 
had interfered in behalf of the French : the English party declined 
in numbers ; and the death of the duke of Bedford changed things 
so as to enable Charles to obtain possession of his entire kingdom. 

When Henry V. died in France, as said before, his son, Henry 
VI., was yet an infant. Before his death he appointed his brothers, 
the dukes of Glouscester and Bedford, the former to the regency 
of England, the latter to that of France. As the young king grew 
up he was found to be of a good disposition but lacked capacity. 
At the age of twenty-five he married Margaret, the daughter of the 
king of Sicily, whom history represents as a woman of masculine 
mind, coping with the most able politicians and commanders of her 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 175 

day; while she was obliged to be the supporter of a husband, whose 
mind, naturally weak, sometimes sunk into utter imbecility. 

When Henry IV., who had formerly been earl of Hereford and 
son to John of G-aunt, duke of Lancaster, who was uncle to Richard 
II. succeeded to the sovereignty, there were still living some of the 
descendants of the duke of Clarence, an elder brother of John of 
Gaunt ; and whose claim to the throne was consequently superior 
to that of the Lancastrian family. Richard, duke of York, now 
represented that family, his mother being the last recognized de- 
scendant of Clarence. Richard's claim, therefore, was chiefly ma- 
ternal, " but he was descended paternally from a son of Edward 
in., who was younger than the duke of Lancaster." The opposi- 
tion to the queen of Henry V. and her ministry, during the inability 
of her son, Henry VI., had procured from Parliament the appoint- 
ment of Richard as protector of the kingdom ; but the transient 
restoration of the king again transferred the power to the queen's 
party. The Yorkists, or adherents of Richard, took up arms and 
a civil war begun, which, for thirty years, desolated the land. 
"This was termed the War of the Roses, the Lancastrian party, 
assuming the red and the Yorkists the white rose." The period 
was a very disastrous one for the country ; repeated battles and 
executions destroying its commercial and domestic interests and 
deluging it with blood. 

The first battle, fought between the rival parties was at St. Al- 
bans, where the Yorkists were triumphant. Having obtained pos- 
session of the king they induced him to sign a general pardon and 
to reinstate the duke of York in office. A change was, however, 
soon again effected by the court party, and York dismissed by the 
king, but three years elapsed before hostilities were renewed. The 
king, much desiring peace, tried to reconcile all differences. He 
went in procession with his whole court to the cathedral of St. 
Paul, the duke of York, at his desire, walking with the queen. 
But cabals and intrigues in various ways again led to war. At 
Bloreheath in Staffordshire, the contending parties again encoun- 
tered each other, victory declaring this time for the Lancastrians. 
The duke of York was now compelled to take refuge in Ireland. 

Meantime the Earl of Warwick, now governor of Calais, espoused 
the cause of Richard and landed a force in Kent. As he advanced 
to London his army increased, and coming to the city he entered 
and took possession of the king. A parliament being convoked it 
was decreed that Henry VI. should remain king during his life and 



176 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

then that the duke of York should succeed him, and in the mean- 
time be intrusted with the administration of the government. The 
queen meantime with her young son had retired into the northern 
part of the kingdom, where a considerable army had gathered 
around her. Richard marched against her, but was defeated and 
slain at Wakefield green and his principal followers taken and ex- 
ecuted. 

Edward, earl of March, son and heir of Richard, duke of York, 
now prosecuted his claim. At St. Albans he was again victorious 
in a battle fought with the queen's army. Margaret, now joined by 
her husband, retired into the north of England where most of her 
strength lay, and the son of Richard was crowned king at London, 
under the title of Edward IV. The contending parties now raged 
with great violence. Their armies met near Towton, a few miles 
from York, where was fought the greatest battle which yet oc- 
curred during the war. The forces of the Lancastrians numbered 
60,000, those of Edward 40,000. During three days the fight con- 
tinued at intervals and resulted in the entire discomfiture of the 
Lancastrian army. In that battle 36,000 of the English are said to 
have fallen. 

Margaret now fled with her husband and young son to seek 
friends in Scotland. She next went to France seeking aid from 
Louis XL, and, after an absence of two years, returned with a 
small body of French which was increased by her Scottish allies. 
With these forces she again met her enemies but was de'e ted at 
•Hexham near the Tyne and with her husband and son again com- 
pelled to flee. Secreting himself for a while in the borders of Scot- 
land Henry was made prisoner and confined in the tower. Margaret 
with the young prince escaped to the continent. The Lancastrians, 
everywhere defeated and humbled and left without a chief, were in- 
capable of offering any effectual resistance and France and Scot- 
land manifested a desire of friendship with the ruling king of 
England. 

Edward had now the misfortune of injuring his cause by offend- 
ing the earl of Warwick, styled "the king maker." With his con- 
sent the earl had gone to the continent to arrange a marriage be- 
tween himself and the princess of Savoy, sister-in-law of Louis XL ; 
but meantime Edward accidently meeting with the Lady Elizabeth 
Gray, of the family of Wydeville, was so pleased with her that he 
impulsively married her and soon acknowledged her publicly as his 
queen. The earl of Warwick resenting this conduct, which interfered 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 177 

with the negotiations in which he was engaged, now conspired against 
him and took sides with the party of Margaret. 

Warwick, having landed a considerable army from Calais in 
England, produced such a revolt against Edward as obliged him 
to flee to Holland. Having obtained there, however, a consider- 
able army of Flemings he returned to England and encountered his 
enemy at Barnet, near London, where Warwick's army was de- 
feated and himself slain. Margaret, on the same day, arrived in 
England from France, and another battle was fought at Tevvksbury 
where she was entirely defeated. Her young son, prince Edward, 
was taken prisoner and murdered. This battle closed the bloody 
war, secured the crown to Edward IV., and restored tranquility to 
the kingdom. Soon after the battle of Tewksbury Henry VI., who 
had never been more than a nominal king, died in the tower. His 
death has been charged to Richard, duke of Gloucester, the brother 
of Edward IV. Margaret, who had displayed such an indomitable 
will in her resolution and perseverance to succeed was now long 
kept a prisoner; but was at length ransomed by Louis XI., when 
she returned to father's court. 

Edward now prepared to invade France; but Louis XI. averted 
the invasion by concluding a treaty with him. His son, Edward, 
at the age of thirteen, was declared his successor, but his corona- 
tion was delayed through the intrigues and sinister designs of his 
uncle, Richard, duke of Gloucester. A large party of the ancient 
nobility having manifested a jealousy of the rising fortune of the 
Wydevilles, the queen's relatives, Richard now availed himself of 
this party for the execution of his designs. As soon as possible he 
got into his possession the young king and his brother, the duke of 
York. He then removed all the nobles, who, he thought, might 
oppose his usurpations, having the Wydevilles, lords Stanley and 
Hastings, executed on the same day without form of trial. 

The parliament then obsequiously declared the young princes ille- 
gitimate and proclaimed Richard king. The two princes, who 
were confined in the tower, now disappeared, and it was supposed 
they were murdered by Richard's command ; but this probably was 
not so. The duke of Buckingham, who had been the prime instru- 
ment in Richard's elevation, perceiving the general detestation in 
which his crimes now made bim to be held, turned against him. 
Henry, earl of Richmond, of the family of Owen Tudor and Cath- 
rine of France, the dowager queen of Henry V., was on his 
mother's side descended from John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. 
12 



178 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Of the Lancastrian party he was now the only conspicuous chief, 
and, being now in exile on the continent, the Lancastrians formed 
a conspiracy to dethrone Richard and confer on him the crown. 
Richard, discovering the plot, seized and executed the duke of 
Buckingham, its prime mover, and a few of his accomplices. He 
then summoned a parliament who acknowledged his title to the 
crown, to strengthen which Richard arranged, although his wife 
was yet living, to marry his niece, Elizabeth, sister of the now dis- 
appeared princes. 

Meanwhile Henry of Richmond, with an eye on the probable pa- 
triotism of the people of his paternal ancestors, embarked from 
Harneur in Normandy with 2,000 well equipped men and landed 
at Milford Haven in Wales, where he was joyfully received by the 
Welsh, who largely augmented his army. Although Richard had 
been energetic in his measures for repelling the invasion, yet he 
was thwarted, not being able to depend upon the fidelity of those 
nobles, who felt they must, in the circumstances, appear in his cause. 
The opposing armies met on Bosworth field, where Richard was 
defeated and slain, Henry, earl of Richmond, was saluted upon 
the field king of England, and thus was transferred the crown from 
the house of Plautagenet to that of Tudor, in 1485. His subse- 
quent marriage with Elizabeth united the house of York to that of 
Lancaster. 

During his reign appeared a young man, who claimed to be Ed- 
ward V., the rightful king of England; and another young man, 
who claimed to be the duke of York, brother to the other. Of 
course it did not suit Henry's policy to recognize their claim, nor 
was it safe for others to do so. The first of these was, therefore, 
called by the public, as a convenient appellation, Lambert Simnel 
and the second Perkin Warbeck. These two persons had for a time 
a considerably strong party in the kingdom. 

The reign of Henry VII. is memorable for two things : firsts as 
being the last before the Protestant Reformation; and second, as be- 
ing that in which the discovery of America took place. It was 
under the banner of Henry VII. that North America was dis- 
covered by the Venetian captains, John and Sebastian Cabot. 
During his reign of twenty-five years England prospered; many 
good laws were passed ; commerce and industry were encouraged ; 
advantages which counterbalanced his many avaricious exactions. 
The parliament at this time, having little independence, gave its 
sanction to such acts as were most agreeable to the king. James 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 179 

IV., king of Scotland, married Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., 
and from her descended the line of Steward, kings of Great Britain. 
Henry VII. was succeeded in 1509 by his son, Henry VIII., the 
first of the " reforming kings " of England. 

From the time the missionary Augustin became first archbishop 
of Canterbury, after his baptism of the King of Kent with great 
numbers of his people (596-600 A. D.) there can be no doubt 
that Christianity was acknowledged more or less as the religion of 
the people of all the seven or eight Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, for 
the period of 227 years to the union of the Heptarchic or Octarchic 
crowns in the person of Egbert, i. e., Cenwulf, an Anglic king. 

But the Saxons were slow converts to Christianity, as we know 
from the fact of Charlemagne (800 A. D.) having through his 
sense of duty or policy — had to force the continental Saxons to 
enter the church ; and even though the British Saxons had been 
all converted to Christianity before the year 800, as doubtless they 
were, yet we cannot suppose there was anything like the systematic 
order or polity carried on between each of these little kingdoms 
and the See of Rome, as afterwards necessarily had place, when 
the Roman Catholic religion was acknowledged either tacitly or 
verbally by law, as the religion of the state in the ages after the 
union of the Octarchic kingdoms. It is from after this time that 
the pope may be said to have governed Anglo-Saxon Britain directly 
from Rome just as he did all the other nations of Europe, which 
had arisen on the ruins of the Roman empire of the west. 

In the line of the Anglo-Saxon kings of the race of Cenwulf I do 
not find any indication of acknowledgment of superiority of the 
See of Rome to their home polity before the reign of Alfred the 
great, Cenwulph's grandson. This man was a professor of the religion 
of Rome, and after his defeat of the Danes in the battle of Ethan- 
dune we see him allow them to settle in Northumberland and East 
Anglia on condition of their being governed by his laws and em- 
bracing Christianity. " They were accordingly baptized and the 
king himself stood sponsor for Guthrun their chief." Not only 
his predecessors in the Anglo-Saxon monarchy but Alfred the great 
himself were much occupied by incursions of the Northmen espec- 
ially the Danes, into the country. Alfred, from the account given, 
appears to have spent much of his mature life in hiding from these 
barbarous freebooters : nor can he be said to have got firmly set- 
tled in the kingdom before his defeat and settlement of them as 
aforesaid. 



180 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Alfred was called " the great," not only because lie was great 
in other respects, but because, like Charlemagne, he was great 
to the. church. It is in its relation to the church, more espec- 
ially to the See of Rome, that we are considering in the 
prophecy the Anglo-Saxon-Norman monarchy, just as in like 
manner the Franco-German. It is only in such sense that 
these monarchies could be supposed to have any relation to the 
prophetic symbols we are considering ; for, in the symbolic pre- 
figuration in the prophecy, these monarchies, as is seen, are only 
in the relation of appendages. 

If, therefore, before the reign of Alfred the Great there were no 
expressed or understood relation by acknowledgment of depend- 
ence of this monarchy on the See of Rome, or by acknowledgment 
of duty to obey it in all things, contributing to it money, etc., and 
if it be allowed that Alfred the Great was the first king of England, 
who expressedly or actually acknowledged such relation of depend- 
ence and duty, which relation was afterwards understood and acted 
upon on the one side by the kings of England, the successors of Alfred, 
as long as they continued in connection with the See of Rome, which 
was down to the Protestant Reformation, and on the other side by the 
See of Rome ; then we are to date the connection of the Anglo-Saxon 
monarchy with the See of Rome from the time that Alfred the 
great attained to the supremacy in the kingdom down to the time 
when the monarchy of England, in the person of Henry VIII., 
severed by law its connection with the See of Rome ; or, in other 
words, from or from about the time that Alfred was crowned king 
of England down to that point in the life of Henry VIII., when he 
broke off all connection with the See of Rome by assuming the spir- 
itual supremacy, formerly granted to and exercised by the pope 
over the realm of England. The death of Alfred the great is set 
down for the year 901, when he was aged 59 years, he having 
been born, according to this in 842. " At the age of twenty-two 
he ascended the throne," that is, when he was rising 23 which 
would leave his ascent to the throne to have been about in the 
year 865. And this truly appears to have been the time of Altred's 
accession, for in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 860 I 
find as follows: " This year died King Ethebald and his body lies 
at Sherborne ; and Ethelbert succeeded to all the realm of his 
brother and he held it in goodly concord and in great tranquility." 
— " And Ethelbert reigned five years and his body lies at Sher- 
borne." He then has Ethelred, that is Aethelfred or Alfred, to 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 181 

succeed, putting said Ethelred's accession under the year 866; but 
it would, of course, be the same year of the death of his pre- 
decessor, that is, 865. And thus agrees in general Miller's and 
Turner's histories and all the histories of the Anglo-Saxons which 
I know of. If this be the proper date, it is from this or from a 
very few years after it that the time is to be reckoned during 
which England may be understood to have legally acknowledged 
the supremacy of the bishop of Rome over its home government, 
down to that point in the reign of Henry VIII., when he assumed 
to himself the spiritual supremacy over England, and severed all 
legal connection between that kingdom and the See of Rome con- 
sidered as its supreme head. But, at the time of the ascent of 
Alfred to the throne, things were in a very unsettled condition in 
regard to the kingdom's internal affairs arising mostly from the 
incursions of the Danes. On coming to the throne he would, there- 
fore, be reasonably supposed to be occupied for a year or two in 
arranging the internal affairs of his kingdom, or in securing his 
own personal safety before he would enter into any business with 
the See of Rome, either directly or indirectly recognizing its su- 
premacy over England, a supremacy which was certainly acknowl 
edged in effect in all the ages after Alfred until Henry VIII 
assumed it to himself ; so that it is said that in the fourteenth cen- 
tury the church owned " half of the land of England." We may, 
therefore, give as the period that England acknowledged the 
supremacy of the See of Rome as 1531 — 865 in years, that is from 
the date of the accession of Alfred the Great to the throne of En- 
gland, under his form of name Ethelred (i.e. properly ^Ethelfred, 
or iElfred) as this is given in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle or in 
Turner's history of the Anglo-Saxons, to that of the assumption of 
spiritual supremacy by Henry VIII, in 1531. 

It may be wondered why it was that the point of time of the 
acknowledgment of the supremacy of the See of Rome over the 
English kingdom did not begin farther back in the line of mon- 
archs, say at Cenwulf , the grandfather of Alfred and f ounder,of the 
monarchy? The reason must be that there was no such mutual 
understanding as a supremacy on the one side and a dependency on 
the other recognized between the See of Rome and the realm of 
England before Alfred. This position by no means argues that the 
Anglo-Saxon kings and their peoples before the reign of Alfred, 
even away back in the Heptarchic kingdoms, were not Roman 
Catholics. ; for they largely were as Beda's Ecclesiastical history, 



182 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

with other histories, makes to appear ; but, as said, they had no 
understanding of a dependency of their kingdom on the See of 
Rome, in the way, legalized or otherwise, which Alfred and his 
successors came to acknowledge such dependency. In the same 
way it might be wondered why it was in the life of Charlemagne in 
particular the point of connection was made, as it evidently was 
with the See of Rome from which the time in years is reckoned 
forward to the accession of Frederick III., he who was successor of 
Charlemagne, as German emperor, when Constantinople was taken 
by the Turks ? Or why that point was not at some point in the 
life of Charlemagne's father Pepin, who was also king of France, 
or of that of his grandfather Charles Martel, all of whom were 
professed Roman Catholics, dutiful children of the " holy father" 
at Rome? The answer is as above that before Charlemagne the 
time had not come for any such connection to be signified ; and so 
it commenced at a point in the life of Charlemagne by which the 
connection is easily perceived; and, reckoning from which to the 
point at which you have to terminate that such significant connec- 
tion, the meaning cannot be misunderstood. 

And, so reckoning from the accession of Alfred the Great, as 
that date is entered in the histories or from some date near to this 
(as the dates entered in the histories for those early periods are 
sometimes only approximations) to the date of the exercise or the 
4 * assumption ' : of the spiritual supremacy by Henry VIII., the 
points of time are quite as definitely marked, and the meaning 
just as little to be misapprehended. 

But what is the meaning? it will be asked. The meaning is, 
according to the prophecy, that the bishop of Rome had, for the 
period given in that interval, a supremacy over or dispensation of 
those kingdoms, and this, their own people consenting thereto. 
He certainly had no dispensation of the crown or benefices of the 
realm of England after Henry VIII. had assumed the supremacy of 
all kinds over that realm himself. 

The line of the kings of England for the space under our con- 
sideration is as follows : 



+3 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 183 

Egbert, i.e. Cenwulf of the race of the Angles, first 
monarch after the Heptarchie. 

Ceolwulf , brother of 
^ Ethelwolf , i.e. Ethelbald, son of Cenwulf 

Ethelbert, son of Ethelwolf 
>!> Alfred i.e. iEthelfred, i.e., Ethelred, son of Ethelwulf 
^ Edward " the elder," son of 
o iEthalstan, son of 
02 Edmund, <* the elder," son of 

^ Edred, brother of ; " in his reign monasteries established. " 
a 3 Edwy, son of 
"^ Edgar, brother of 

Edward II, son of 

Ethelred, son of Edgar and Elfrida. 

Edmund II, " Ironside" son of 



• Sweyn, not fully established as king. 

.2 « Canute, son of 

£ g^ Harold, son of 

Q Hardicanute brother of 



~ o^ 



r o ^ Edward, " the confessor," son of Ethelred 
3<% F Harold, son of Earl Godwin, for four years 



A 



9 >& William " of Normandy " 
g «g | William II, " Rufus," son of 
t2 g Henry I, brother of 



g .2 Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, grandson of William I by his 
jS ° g daughter Adela. 



184 CREATOR AND COSMOS } OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Henry II, grandson of Henry I, by his daughter Matilda. 

Richard I, son of 

John, brother of 
§ Henry III, son of 
£P Edward I, son of 

53 

"3 Edward II, son of 

03 

£ Edward III, son of 
*g Richard II, son of the " black prince." 
© Henry IV, " Duke of Lancaster.* ' 
§ Henry V, son of 
E Henry VI, son of 

Edward IV, son of Richard, duke of York. 

Edward V, son of 

Richard III, uncle of 



«h 




o 


# 




?h 


© 


o 


GO 


T3 


a 


3 


o 


H 


ffl 





Henry VII, "earl of Richmond." 
Henry VIII, son of 



In the manner of the " Coronation" of the Anglo-Saxon mon- 
archs it does not appear that the custom of their ancestors on the 
continent was ever much departed from. They seem to have had 
festivities accompanied with their ancient Gothic songs; the ab- 
sence of the appendage called " a crown" dispensing, of course, 
with the presence of a bishop at least for the purpose of putting 
this on the monarch's head; although they may have had some- 
thing corresponding to a crown. The story of Alfred, afterwards 
called the great, having been crowned by the Pope at Rome when 
he was five years of age and on the desire of his father to have him 
succeed to himself instead of his elder brother, is simply a monk- 
ish fiction of William of Malmesbury or some other, who wished to 
have Alfred correspond to Charlemagne as much as possible as to 
personal character and accidents of life. The account also of the 
coronation of Ethelred, the son of Elfrida, by Dunstan is either 
fictitious or an extravagant representation of what really took place. 

Of the prophecy in Rev. XIII., 11-18, which we are now con- 
sidering, we have under this head commented particularly only on 
the first verse (that is verse 11th,) of this chapter. The rest of it 
we will develop now : Verse 12th is: " And he exerciseth all the 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 185 

power of the first being before hiin and causeth the earth and them 
which dwell therein to worship the first being, whose deadly wound 
was healed." The first symbolic prefiguration here spoken of re- 
fers to the empire at Constantinople; and the second one exer- 
cising all the power which he was accustomed to exercise before 
him, means that the papacy to which the second refers, exercised 
all the same kind of power as the other did, namely, temporal and 
spiritual sovereignty ; "before him" meaning contemporaneously 
with him, literally "before his face," in view of him. And his 
" causing the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first 
being whose deadly wound was healed ' ' means that the papacy 
caused all its adherents to obey the empire at Constantinople, during 
the two centuries of the exarchate of Ravenna, or in the main from 
553 to 754 A. D., at which last date the exarchate was transferred 
to the papacy by Pepin, king of France, and forever lost to the 
empire at Constantinople. I have shown clearly before that the 
" deadly wound healed " or the " wounded head revived " refers to 
the restoration of Rome and Italy to the eastern Roman empire in 
553 by the general of the Emperor Justinian, after which for about 
two centuries Rome was within the jurisdiction of the Roman em- 
pire proper. For this period, therefore, the pope was a subject 
of the Roman emperor, and would personally and through h"& min- 
istry inculcate in the churches obedience to him. It is plain that 
the wounded head healed refers to this part of the empire which was 
lost to the empire for one hundred and fifty years or so (410-553) 
and possessed and much abused by the Goths and Vandals ; and then 
restored to the empire in 553 and possessed by it during the suc- 
cessive terms of eighteen exarchs. During this period the popes ap- 
pear, on the whole, to have acted as dutiful subjects and profitable 
servants to the eastern Roman emperors; for he caused "the 
earth," that is, the Latin church, extending in the west far and 
wide, over which his dominion was acknowledged, " to worship the 
first being, whose deadly wound was healed," that is, to obey the 
laws and respect the emperor of the Roman empire proper whose 
seat was at Constantinople. 

Verse 13: "And he doth great wonders so that he maketh fire 
come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men." This 
appears to refer to the miracles which the Papacy and the Roman 
Catholic ministry generally claimed the power of doing. In Mat- 
thew XXIV., 24, Jesus says in a discourse to his disciples: " For 
there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and shall show 



186 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

great signs and wonders, insomuch that if it were possible they shall 
deceive the very elect." And, in the 2d Epistle to the Thessalo- 
nians, Ch. II., 9-10, Paul, in speaking of the mystery of iniquity, 
which would in time be revealed, says: " Even him, whose coming 
is after the power of Satan, with all powers and signs and lying 
wonders ; and with all deceivableness of righteousness in them that 
perish ; because they received not the love of the truth, that they 
might be saved." From this it is plain that wonders or miracles, 
so called, may be for lying and deceiving as well as for good pur- 
poses ; and hence how necessary it is that those engaged in the min- 
istry of the church should gird up the loins of their mind and so 
govern themselves that in all they say and do they should be strictly 
consistent with truth and righteousness, looking to the example of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and always cultivating his spirit in them- 
selves and all others. Looking unto him they will receive the love 
of the truth, whereby they may be saved and will not be given over 
to "the strong delusion," which God should send, "that they 
should believe a lie : That they might be condemned who would 
not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." 2d 
Thess. II. , 11-12. " So that he maketh fire come down from 
heaven on the earth in the sight of men." Some have thought this 
part of the prophecy to have pointed literally to the " Greek fire," 
which was used so effectually by the Eastern Roman empire against 
the Saracen Mahometans in their siege of Constantinople in the 
years 661 to 667. In the former of these years the Caliph, 
Moawyah, succeeded to the Caliphate and in his victorious progress 
westward made several ineffectual attempts to capture Constantino- 
ple. For five successive summers the Moslems attacked the city 
and retreated in the winter. At length in 667 the Greek fire was 
invented by Callinicus of Heliopolis and brought by him to Con- 
stantinople. 

It was a composition of naphtha, pitch and sulphur, which, when 
once ignited, could not be extinguished by water. It adhered to 
wood and so consumed whole fleets ; when thrown upon the com- 
batants it insinuated itself between the joints of their armor and 
they died a death of torture. It was projected by pistons, " took 
fire in the air and approached its victims in the form of fiery drag- 
ons." In one winter the caliph lost a fleet and army; and not 
only retired, but concluded a peace by agreeing to pay the emperor 
a tribute for thirty years. Thus and at this time was the progress 
of the Musselmans barred in the east; while in the west, at a 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 187 

somewhat later date, it was effectually barred by Charles Martel, 
in the great battle he fought with them of seven day's duration on 
the field of Tours, in 714. The Greek fire, therefore, which proved 
so effectual against the enemies of the empire, was first invented 
and used while the pope was a subject of the eastern Roman empire, 
but its origination, according to the account, is not ascribable to 
Rome or Italy or to any one in the then Roman empire ; but to 
one who had his abode in the then Mahometan province of Egypt, 
to " Callinicus of Heliopolis, who invented it and brought it to 
Constantinople." If then the prophecy point to the Greek fire it 
cannot mean that it originated from the papacy to which the proph- 
ecy evidently points ; and so the prophecy may not point so dis- 
tinctively to the Greek fire as to that which was preindicated by 
Christ and Paul as quoted above. During the two centuries which 
included the invention and use of the Greek fire in defense of the 
capital of the empire, the papacy was subject to that empire and 
the prayers of the Papacy, in all its ramifications were daily offered 
for the peace, prosperity and good weal of the empire and empe- 
ror; therefore the invention and effectual use of this fire for this 
purpose may have been by some ascribed as a result of the prayers 
of the church, which would in the uncritical vulgar mind — which 
takes things bv wholes — resolve itself into a miracle of the church 
or of the Pope. Verse 14: "And deceiveth them that dwell on the 
earth by those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of 
the being ; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should 
make an image to the being, which had the wound by a sword and 
did live." The first part of this verse is included in the explana- 
tion I have given of the preceding verse ; namely, in the miracles, 
which the Papacy and the church always either claimed the power 
to do or that they were the instruments in doing. But in the last 
part of the verse: " Saying to them that dwell on the earth that 
they should make an image to the being which had the wound by 
a sword and did live;" we have another phase of the prophecy, 
another preindication. Here the Papacy is in a transition state; it 
passes out of the two hundred years of the exarchate, and out of a 
state of subjection, first to the emperors at Rome, second to the 
emperors at Constantinople; third to the Gothic kings of Rome 
and Italy ; and fourth to the Exarchs and the emperors at Constan- 
tinople, into a state of independence, into its own independent, 
temporal sovereignty, which it receives as a gift from its devoted 
sons Pepin and Charlemagne, kings of France, and retains and ex- 



188 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

ercises then for many centuries, all the western potentates, kings 
and emperors, consenting thereto. " Saying to them that dwell 
on the earth that they should make an image to the being that had 
the wound by a sword and did live." Here the Papacy first advises 
its own people at Rome and in the Exarchate to organize a state 
and church government, after the manner of that of the Roman 
empire, whose seat was at Constantinople, of which new govern- 
ment the pope should be sovereign. Secondly, the Papacy, through 
itself and through its ministry advises Charlemagne, the now ruler 
of most of western people, excepting Scandinavia and the British 
isles, to organize a system of government after the pattern of that 
of the Roman empire, whose seat was at Constantinople; of which 
empire the pope was to be considered spiritual head ; but, as the 
spiritual was superior to the temporal, so the pope was to be 
also considered the supreme head, owner and dispenser of that 
empire. And thirdly, through its ministry in the British isles, the 
Papacy did, in like manner and spirit, teach organization of state 
governments after the pattern of that Roman empire, whose seat 
was at Constantinople; but of which, itself being naturally con- 
sidered spiritual head, as head on earth of the Catholic church 
representative of St. Peter and Vicegerent of Christ, it should 
be considered as supreme temporal ruler also. This was the doc- 
trine preached at that time by the ministry of the Church of Rome, 
so that you have many state and church governments organized at 
this time and on the same general model. The union of the Pictish 
and Scottish kingdoms took place nearly at the same time as that 
of the Heptarchic kingkoms in England, and as that of the 
nations of Europe under the Carlo vingian house. Ireland was 
now and for a long time previously had been a Catholic mon- 
archy, acknowledging in general the supremacy of the pope. Thus, 
and in such way, by the teaching of its ministry far and wide, was 
the pope's supremacy over Europe established: Thus and in such 
way was each " image " (church and state government) '« made to 
the being which had the wound by a sword and did live." 

Verse 15: " And he had power to give life to the image of 
the being, that the image of the being should both speak, and cause 
that as many as would not worship the image of the being should 
be killed." This prophecy shows the government of the Papacy 
in full operation, all its rights or assumptions acknowledged and its 
mandates obeyed, far and wide, as well as at home at Rome and in 
the Exarchate. " He had power to give life to the image of the 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 189 

being, that the image of the being should both speak, " etc., means 
that the Papacy, being the generally acknowledged supreme 
authority, business could not properly be carried on either in the 
jurisdiction proper of the Papacy, that is, the Exarchate, or in the 
other governments far and wide, which acknowledged the Papal 
supremacy, without the Papal sanction. Great confidence arises to 
the citizens of any country from their living in accordance with the 
established laws thereof; thus living they both " speak " out and 
act forth ; but acting against the laws or not living in accordance 
with them they lack such confidence of word and act, are kicking 
against the pricks; and much limited in their action. "And he 
had power to give life to the image," etc., that is, the Roman 
Catholic ministry established in the exarchate and in all the other 
governments which acknowledged the Papal supremacy, were an 
influence in favor of that government so long as it did not oppose 
the Papal authority, or so long as it went in accordance with it: 
so long as this was the case the ministry prayed for the government 
and inculcated obedience thereto among all its people ; but so soon 
as marked disobedience to, or disregard of the Papal authority 
was noticed in any of those governments this was either dealt with 
from Rome ; or by the Papal ministry established in this govern- 
ment, when the latter was thought to be sufficient without direct in- 
terference from Rome. It is seen, therefore, that though there 
were no telegraphs or telephones in the ages to which this prophecy 
directly refers, yet the Papacy, through its pledged and sworn 
ministry was intimate at every European fireside, where its 
authority was acknowledged; and assumed the right to pry into 
not only the secret affairs but the secret thoughts of every one of its 
votaries. 

" Should both speak and cause that as many as would not wor- 
ship the image of the being should be killed; " This appears to 
mean that the Papacy as a recompense for obedience to itself, as 
the constituted visible supremacy upon earth, should by its influ- 
ences so exercise the minds of governments and of the members 
thereof that they would the more easily perceive the spirit of the 
established laws, which had the Papal sanction, and the more easily 
perceive who they were who were obejdng and who disobeying 
these laws; and the more intelligently compel obedience to those 
laws in accordance with the terms of their vow, pledge or oath to 
the Papal supremacy. Therefore, governments would become so 
intelligent as to the spirit of the laws, and so devoted to the 



190 CREATOK AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Papacy that those would not obey the laws of the State and of 
the church, " who would not worship the image of the being " 
should be disfranchised, imprisoned, killed temporally ! Outcast, 
shunned, excommunicated, killed spiritually! It is seen, there- 
fore, how the Papal system tended to centralization ; and to the 
keeping of the masses, whom circumstances compel to ignorance, 
in the power of the few. The pope as supreme was the great cen- 
ter of power as well as the great centralizer in governments. 

Yerses 16-17: " And he causeth all, both small and great, rich 
and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in the right hand and in 
the foreheads ; and that no man might buy or sell save he that had 
the mark or the name of the being or the number of his name. 

In the present age at least the Roman Catholic laity commune, in 
the sacrament of the Lord's supper only in one kind the priest 
putting a wafer on their tongue ; but neither bread nor cup in their 
right hand; although the clergy of that church commune in both 
kinds, partaking of both the bread and wine. The mark in this 
case would, doubtless, refer to the oath of allegiance taken to the 
pope by his subjects, in the Exarchate, which was usually taken with 
the right hand uplifted, or holding the Bible or some religious 
canon; and to the oath taken to obey the pope and the rules of the 
church by the Roman Catholic ministers at their ordination ; and to 
the oath taken by the subjects of all Roman Catholic countries, so 
far as they were required to do so signifying allegiance to their 
highest ruler and obedience to the established laws and the consti- 
tuted authorities. This oath or pledge might, too, have been in 
the way of a subscription with the right hand to a document, such 
as a profession of faith, or the like. 

The sign in the forehead points to the sign of the cross marked 
by the tip of the priest's linger on the forehead of the infant in bap- 
tism in the Roman Catholic church. This mark of its kind was uni- 
versally given in the Roman Catholic church, all in that system 
being baptized in their infancy. 

" And that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark or 
the name of the being or the number of his name." This means 
that it was contrary to the law of the Exarchate or the Papal 
dominions proper for any one to live there who was not a true Ro 
man Catholic, which of course included as a preliminary the com- 
pliance with the ordinance of baptism and the reception of the mark 
upon the forehead. Secondly, it included compliance, perhaps, with 
other ordinances in which there should be an oath taken with the 



PAPAL- GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 191 

right hand uplifted or by a subscription, etc. This was the general 
rule in all the organized governments in Roman Catholic Christen- 
dom, so when you speak of the Exarchate as a temporal and spirit- 
ual sovereignty you speak of all. You see, therefore, the pope 
being the acknowledged supreme head over all Christian kingdoms, 
all Western Europe was somewhat like one family under his father- 
hood. They had all to be obedient to him and in their infancy to 
receive his distinguishing mark. 

Moreover, the mark in the forehead or in the right hand would 
also indicate the slavery or entire subjection of mind and body into 
which all should be brought by this power; the forehead symbol- 
izing the mental, intellectual and rational faculties ; the right hand, 
the principal organ of corporeal labor, the bodily faculties. In the 
ages of papal supremacy over Europe men could not think very 
freely on many subjects, more especially the subject of religion. 
If they did so, they could not express themselves freely upon it. 
It is to be presumed that in those long ages referred to most people 
were of the class that are now called agnostics. Agnosticism was, 
indeed, the only safe ground for them to occupy, since they dared 
not differ in religious opinion from the priests. The subjection of 
the minds of the people to the priests, to such a degree as to inter- 
fere with their thinking fairly and fully upon the subject of re- 
ligion or any subject on which they should think is a great injury to 
the people of any country, a great injury to any true polity. Un- 
til men's minds become enslaved their bodies will probably remain 
unsubdued; for the mind is the governor and director of the body, 
the latter follows and is obedient to the former. So men should 
above all things not neglect to use their reason freely, fearlessly 
and aright ; for it is the highest and noblest faculty with which 
God has endowed them, and they should appreciate and use this 
endowment and not allow any man or any system to enslave it and 
them most basely in and with it. But while men freely use and cul- 
tivate their reason and follow the course it leads them in, they 
should at the same time always remember to cultivate modesty and 
exercise charity. 

Verse 18th and last: " Here is wisdom. Let him that hath un- 
derstanding count the number of the being, for it is the number of 
a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six." In 
Rev. XIV., 11, the mark is called the mark of the being's name, 
and in chapters XV., 2, and XIII., 17, the number is called the 
number of his name, which, according to the last clause of verse 



192 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

18th of this XHIth chapter, is in the original Greek %£?. The 
ancient Greeks, as well as Komans, used their alphabetic charac- 
ters instead of figures to express numbers. 

Thus the first character % equals 600 
" second " £ " 60 

" third " s=st '« 6 



Which added together " 666 

And in the letters of our alphabet / equals Ch. 

it a a a a a a £ a ^i. 

a tt a tt a a tt q a st.* 

Which put together form Chxist, a specious resemblance of the 
name Christ. 

The two first radical letters of the name Christ Ch. K., which are 
the first radicals of the mark, Charagma, and constituted the im- 
perial monogram of the Christian Roman Empire, represent 700, the 
perfect number. The Ch, x, st, represent 666, an imperfect num- 
ber, a tripple falling away, (apostasy) from septenary perfection, 
as Woodsworth calls it. The early copies A and Yulgate write the 
numbers in full in the Greek ; but B writes merely the three Greek 
letters standing for numbers, Ch, x, st. C reads 616, but Irenseus, 
one of the earliest and most learned of the Fathers, opposes this 
and maintains 666. 

Hence we see that Chxist is the name, which is so specious a re- 
semblance of the name Christ, that the worldly, the selfish, the 
carnal, the cruel, the wicked, yea, all who are neglectful of their 
own soul's salvation and of that of the world, never detect the 
couoterf eit. Does he look like as a lamb ? Yet he has not the gentle 
nature of that creature; but a character more like that of the 
tiger. 

Moreover it is stated in verse 18th that the number of the being 
is the number of man, that is, of man generically as well as in- 
dividually. There is a parallel passage in Rev. XXI., 17, 
where the same word avdpd>nou is used, also without the article, 
in describing the dimensions of the new Jerusalem. If, therefore, 
man represent the dimensions of the symbolic being, man also re- 
presents the dimensions of the new Jerusalem or redeemed man. 

* The character <; is an abbreviation for sti. or st. 

[See an unabridged Greek Lexicon as to the numerical values, and equivalents in English 
letters of the Greek letters q, C, /.] 



PAPAL-GERMANIC CHURCH AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 193 

And as the dimensions of the new Jerusalem are the dimensions 
of man, not only of some particular man, but of mankind, including 
male and female; so the character of the new Jerusalem is the 
character of the angel, which represents redeemed man, man though 
not freed from yet exalted above human frailties; man living in 
the world but not of it; understanding what he is and keeping his 
inferior nature in subjection ; and thus the true Christ is exhibited 
in the perfecting and perfected human character. This is the 
Gospel's preindication fulfilled. The spirit and character of Christ 
are what are required in men and what men should seek to cultivate 
in themselves. This will be the opposite of tke character of the 
being we have been considering. A study of the Gospel's idea of 
Christ gives a sufficiently definite conception of the character we 
should pattern after. 



13 



194 creator and cosmos; or, cosmotheologies, etc. 

An Explanation of Chapter XVIIth of Revelation, showing 
its Fulfillment in the Papacy, Considered in the Idea 
of its Supremacy over all Kingdoms and Rulers of the 
Earth; Under which Head are Reviewed the Crusades; 
the inquisiton as established and operated, especially 
in the Old World ; and as to the Rise and Dominion of 
the Papacy. 

As this chapter represents the unity of the Roman Catholic sys 
tern with the pope at its head in all the ages of its state and church 
operation; and as, in the periods of the Crusades and of the Inqui- 
sition, its power was most remarkably developed, I will begin this 
treatise ( 1 ) with a brief account of the Crusades ; will follow this 
with (2) an explanation of the chapter itself ; will then (3) 
develop the doings of the Inquisition; and will (4) end it with an 
account of the rise of the system as to its Roman center and its 
Gothic and Anglic circumference. 

As the church advanced into the Middle ages, going farther from 

o ' © © 

the primitive times, the simple and spiritual worship of the early 
Christians became insensibly exchanged for frivolous rites and idle 
ceremonies; now the possession of relics of the saints or good 
people that had gone before, and the pilgrimages made to holy 
places became objects of great desire and faith and substitutes for 
personal piety. 

Of all pilgrimages that to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem was 
considered the most meritorious, and was performed by multitudes 
of devotees from all parts of Europe. After Jerusalem had fallen 
into the possession of the Saracens, these pilgrimages, though 
attended with more difficulty and danger, were still continued. 
The intelligent and gentlemanly caliph, Haroun Al Raschid, 
afforded protection to the Christian pilgrims, even presenting to 
Charlemagne the keys of the holy sepulchre. The Abbassides, his 
successors in the caliphate, pursued the like tolerant course. But 
when the dynasty of the Fatimites from Africa came into power, 
the Christians began to experience from them severe persecution. 
In the reign of Hakem, the third caliph of the Fatimite race, there 
was much persecution of the Christian cause; many Christians 
suffered death; many of their churches were demolished and the 
destruction of the holy sepulchre was attempted. In the reigns of 
the succeeding caliphs, however, there came to be a more tolerant 
spirit, and pilgrimages became again very frequent ; but reflection 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 195 

on experience has concluded this tolerance may have arisen at least 
partially from policy, as the tributes required of the pilgrims 
greatly assisted in the repletion of the Mahometan treasury. 

In the year 1094 pilgrimages were found to be more numerous 
than at any time previously; multitudes of every rank and sex 
thronged the roads to Jerusalem. From the Fatimites the holy 
land had now passed into the possession of the Turks ; and the 
pilgrims, who, with toil and suffering, had made their way to the 
most distant parts of Christendom, often found themselves, on their 
arrival at the holy city, debarred from entrance thereto by demands 
which they were unable to meet, thus being deprived of the object 
for which their journey had been undertaken. Multitudes of the 
pilgrims perished from want, comparatively few being able to ac- 
complish a return to their homes. But those who did return 
brought accounts to their people of the sufferings they had been 
compelled to endure by the Turks. The effects produced by these 
reports show how powerfully religious faith now animated the 
masses of the people ; and the stupidity with which the people re- 
jected the Savior, when on earth, has been accounted no more 
remarkable than the zeal and enthusiasm which they now displayed 
to recover his sepulchre. And a consideration of how the first 
Crusade was eventually carried out may show, that, if this intense 
feeling had existed in the minds of the people one hundred years 
before, it could hardly have been carried into action. But, mean- 
time, the institution of knighthood and the spirit of chivalry had 
arisen, which, connected with Christianity, introduced at least a 
more energetic and enterprising order of things. 

In the eleventh century chivalry arose in Normandy. Neglecting 
here the question as to who they were that were originators of it I 
may say that the priesthood sanctioned, in its origin, the institu- 
tion of knighthood. Each member of the order had the power of 
conferring it on such candidates for it, as had proved themselves 
worthy thereof by virtuous deed and valorous exploits ; and knight- 
hood soon became an honor whereto kings and princes aspired. 
The institution, in its origin, was connected with religion; a con- 
scious loftiness of purpose, and a firm persuasion of the favor and 
protection of heaven bore the knight almost above humanity. 
Nothing which could augment and preserve their physical powers 
did they neglect. From early youth they inured themselves to 
incredible labors and privations, which made them strong and ca- 
pable to endure ; and, for self-preservation against the arms in 



196 CREATOR AND COSMOS,; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

use, they cased their bodies in steel armor, so heavy that a man 
of moderate strength to-day could hardly lift its weight. They 
rode upon good horses, well accourted and cared for. They were 
distinguished by their good manners, courtesy controlled by candor. 
To maintain truth in word and act was a part of the knight's vow. 
Of his religion or the lady he loved he was not ashamed and never 
spoke lightly of the one or the other ; but later, when knighthood 
became prevalent among the higher classes generally, the latter 
phase of its character was much abused by the supercillious respect 
which was paid to the females of the upper classes. Christianity 
had, of course, shown woman's true place in society, and that she 
had an equal share with men in the grace of God and an equal hope 
of immortality. From Christ and his apostles men had received 
special directions in regard to the treatment of the weaker sex, 
which had the effect of moderating their tyranny and restraining 
their licentiousness. The priesthood in connection with the feudal 
system, co-operating with these directions, produced a new phase in 
modern civilization. This was domestic society. The hereditary 
baron in his walled castle surrounded by serfs and menials, was a 
petty sovereign; and, since he was too haughty to associate with 
his underlings, but for the society of his own family must have 
been reduced to solitude. His wife and daughters, well instructed 
and nurtured by the church, came thus to be well known and appre- 
ciated, as the dispensers of domestic happiness. Woman being 
now beheld in her proper position, her nature and character being 
softened and refined by Christianity, seemed, to the outside be- 
holder especially invested with a new and holy radiance. It was 
no wonder that those men of finer manners, such as knighthood 
found or made, should have displayed such appreciation as almost 
amounted to idolatry ! 

The Crusades. 

Peter the hermit was a Frenchman, a native of Amiens. He had 
been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where his enthusiasm had been 
fed, and his resentment against the Mahometans enkindled. Hav- 
ing related his experience to the pope, Urban II., he with his ap- 
probation went through Europe declaiming on the sufferings of the 
pilgrims and calling on Christian warriors to have pity upon their 
brethren, to go up to battle in the name of the Lord and no longer 
suffer the holy sepulchre to be possessed by infidels. Among the 
people he produced a great ardor for the object which he advo- 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 197 

cated ; the enthusiasm spread from city to city from country to 
country. Urban II. convened a council at Placentia, where ambas- 
sadors presented themselves from Alexius Comnenus, emperor of 
Constantinople. He had previously sent to beg the aid of the 
western powers against the Turks by whom his city was threatened ; 
and the ambassadors now reiterated the danger of delay. 

In the autumn of the same year, 1095, a second council was con- 
vened at Clermont to make a final decision. At this council were 
present an immense number of priests, princes and nobles. Urban 
addressed the assembled crowds, depicting with persuasive eloquence 
the horrors of infidel oppression, the duty of arming in the defense 
of the holy cause and the reward which would accrue to the faith- 
ful. Overwhelming was the effect of his oratory. Unanimously 
the crowds sent forth the shout, " God wills it." " God wills 
it." " It is the will of God," replied the pope, " and let this 
memorable word, the inspiration surely of the Holy Spirit, be for- 
ever adopted as the battle-cry, to animate the courage and devotion 
of the champions of Christ." On the right shoulder of the outer 
garment of the crusaders the sign of the cross was stamped; the 
absolution of their sins was by the pope pronounced and the people 
separated to prepare for the war. 

In the following year, 1096, the 15th of August was set for the 
departure of the pilgrims, but so eager were the lower orders to 
depart and so incapable of appreciating the necessity of preparation 
that large numbers under the command of Peter the Hermit and 
Walter the Pennyless set out early in the spring. Walter was a 
man of considerable military experience and genius, but the most 
of those under his standard were undisciplined and unmanageable. 
Peter's army were, if possible, still more unmanageable and licentious. 
Of these first armies many had fallen, especially in skirmishes with 
the Hungarians and Bulgarians, before they reached Constantinople. 
Having arrived at the Hellespont they crossed the Bosphorus, but, 
in their progress through Bythinia, nearly the whole fell an easy 
prey to the Turks. Walter fell in battle and Peter returned to Con- 
stantinople. 

While, however, these undisciplined multitudes were hurrying to 
their own destruction, and this not without bringing much injury 
to peoples of their own race and' religion, the chivalry of Europe, 
under their most able and warlike commanders, were making 
active and full preparations for a more regular and efficient 
warfare. The most celebrated chiefs of the first crusade were 



198 CREATOR AND COSMOS J OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lorraine; Hugh, count of Ver- 
mandois, brother of the French king; Robert, duke of Normandy, 
son of William, the conqueror; Robert, count of Flanders; Ray- 
mond, count of Toulouse; Adhemar, bishop of Puy; and Bohe- 
mond, count of Tarentum, son of Robert Guiscard. It was under 
the banners of this South European Norman chief that Tancred his 
kinsman, and the pride of European chivalry, marched. These 
different armies, under the command of their respective chiefs, took 
different routes to Constantinople. 

The army of Hugh of Vermandois was the first that reached the 
dominions of Alexius Comnenus. 

Here having arrived Hugh expected to find welcome and enter- 
tainment, but instead thereof he was arrested and imprisoned. 
Although when he asked aid from the west he would gladly have 
received a few thousand troops, yet now conscious of his weakness, 
and consequent upon the experience he had had with the passage 
of the armies of Peter and Walter, Alexius was averse to such 
formidable armies, even though under friendly banners, appearing 
in his dominions. " It seemed," says the princess Anna Com- 
nena, the historian of the empire of this age, " as if all Europe, 
loosened from its foundations, was precipitating upon Asia." God- 
frey having arrived Hugh was released, but not till he had done 
homage to the emperor of the east. 

Alexius was, however, not on the whole, ill-disposed to the cru- 
sades; but he wished to preserve his own dominions uninjured; 
and also, since he saw the expeditions should and must move on, 
he determined, if possible, to convey from Constantinople one 
army before the arrival of another. 

The several armies of the crusaders met under the walls of Nice 
in Bythinia, and laid siege to this city, now the capital of the Sel- 
joukian Turks. After the commencement of the siege Robert of 
Normandy arrived, and also Peter the Hermit with the small wreck 
of his army. Assembled here the number of the crusaders is 
computed at 600,000 armed men. While the crusaders were en- 
gaged in siege of his city Solyman, the Turkish sultan, having 
assembled his armies from the distant parts of his dominions, 
appeared on the mountain in view of the Christian camp. A battle 
soon ensuing the Turks were defeated, and, after a few weeks, the 
city surrendered. 

With vigorous and unremitting effort Solyman raised another 
army, and when, after the surrender of the city, the crusaders 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 199 

commenced their march, he again gave them battle and was again 
defeated. In this battle great numbers on both sides fell. Now 
saving themselves by retreat, the Turks proceeded to desolate the 
country through which lay the route of the crusaders. Thus the 
difficulties of the march were increased and numbers of crusaders 
died on the way from various causes. Halting for but a brief 
time at Antiochetta they next proceeded to Antioch, which, having 
unsuccessfully stormed, they besieged. For seven months did this 
siege continue with little prospect of success, when one night the 
commander of one of the towers, acting treacherously to his own 
standard, admitted a party of the crusaders within the city. The 
Turks, awakened by the noise of the crusaders' signals without the 
walls, rushed to arms, and a sanguinary contest continued through 
the night. To the army without their friends within threw open 
the gates, and in the uncertainty and confusion which arose from 
the darkness many Turks as well as Christians fell by the hands of 
their brethren. The light coming on fanaticism wrought great 
cruelties and excesses. The city remained in possession of the 
crusaders, but the citadel was still occupied by the Turks. The 
small supplies of provisions, found within the city by its present 
occupants, were soon exhausted; and before they could take meas- 
ures for procuring more a large army, under the command of the 
Persian Emir, appeared before the walls. The Mahometan powers 
far and wide were alarmed by the reported success of the Christians 
and Solyman had done all he could to arouse them to a defense of 
his kingdom. 

The crusaders in their turn were now besieged ; the Persian Emir 
and Solyman, having joined their forces, were now set down before 
Antioch with 300,000 men. In the Christian camp a horrible 
famine prevailed; their horses were slain for a supply of food, 
while within their view the Turkish camp displayed an abundance 
for necessity and luxury. Reduced to the utmost distress the 
superstition of the soldiers was called into aid. The priests, let 
what will have been the cause and object, declared to the soldiers 
they saw visions from heaven, encouraging them to persevere and 
promising them victory. A monk asserted that the place, where 
the lance which pierced the Savior's side was buried, was revealed 
to him, with directions to procure it, and that with it in possession 
victory was assured. Search was undertaken, and, after a pit was 
dug, the monk descended into it and returned with the lance. The 
courage of the soldiers was revived and after the customary rites 



200 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

of the church had been over on the following morning they ad- 
vanced full of assurance against the infidels, though with much 
diminished numbers. Though the battle was on the side of the 
Turks obstinately fought, yet the crusaders were persistent, and, 
a cry going up among them that the saints were seen fighting 
on their side, gave them resistless energy: On all sides they rushed 
upon the enemy, who fled in confusion. The Turkish camp now 
falling into the victors' hands abundance succeeded to famine. 

At Antioch the crusading chiefs delayed yet two months, when a 
pestilence visited their camp by which they lost many of their fol- 
lowers. In October, 1099, they went forward and at length arrived 
in sight of the holy city. In the midst of mutual dissensions which 
had arisen the knights wisely practiced with each other Christian 
forbearance and directed their whole mind to their common object. 
The army now reduced to a comparatively small effective force they 
made vigorous preparations for the assault of the city. Movable 
towers and all the implements of destruction known to the warfare 
of the eleventh century were put in use. Acts of valor not only 
heroic but almost incredible were made by the chiefs during the 
two days of the assault. The battlements being at length gained, 
they there planted the standard of the cross ; and in the massacre 
which followed the blood of thousands stained the walls of Jerusalem. 

The crusaders, the object of their expedition being accomplished 
in the delivery of the holy sepulchre, now bent their thoughts to 
the permanent establishment of their power in Palestine. Their 
most esteemed chief, Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, they 
elected king of Jerusalem. He soon found that his new kingdom 
was not by any means a bed of roses ; he saw that the Moslems 
were not intending to let him rest; and so, advancing from Jeru- 
salem, he defeated a large army of them at Askelon. On God- 
frey's death, after some discension, the crown was given to his 
brother Baldwin. Under his administration the kingdom of Jer u- 
salem flourished . The Mahometan banner borne by Turks, Per- 
sians and Saracens, always succumbed to his army. Acre, Tripolis 
and Gidon were captured, and, in 1124, Tyre, by the aid of the 
Venetian fleet, was added to his kingdom. Thus had the crusaders 
broken the power of the Turks, a power, which, had the Christians 
remained at home, it is supposed, they would sooner or later have 
to had to encounter in their own countries. 

A second crusade was undertaken in the year 1147 by Louis 
VII., king of France. This king was early in his reign involved 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 201 

in war with his aspiring nobles, and although successful in sub- 
duing them yet his conscience was oppressed by the thought of his 
destruction of thirteen hundred persons, whom he caused to be 
burned in a church, wherein they had taken refuge, in the town 
Vitre. Reasoning on the vain addition which had been made to 
Christianity in the dark ages he concluded that his own deed, in 
the carrying out of another crusade, might not only balance the 
great crimes whereof he was guilty, but be even carried to the 
credit side of his maker's account current. 

He, therefore, as well as the Emperor Conrad of Germany un- 
dertook the second crusade ; but their armies melted away before 
the Mahometan arrows, and after a visit to Jerusalem, productive 
of no efficient aid to the Christians there, they returned with the 
wreck of their armies to Germany and France. 

In the year 1187 the kingdom of Jerusalem, then under Guy of 
Lusignan, was in a state of extreme weakness. At that time 
Saladin, one of the greatest chiefs the Mahometans yet had, was 
advancing victoriously from all quarters to Palestine. At Tiberias 
he encountered in battle the king of Jerusalem, and was victori- 
ous over him. He soon after took Jerusalem, after it had been in 
the hands of the Christians eighty-eight years. In his capture of 
Jerusalem the conduct of Saladin was gentle and magnanimous ; 
for the rich prisoners he accepted a ransom and the poor he al- 
lowed to go free. Extending his conquests he now made himself 
master of the whole of Palestine excepting the city of Tyre. 

The news of the conquest of Palestine filled Europe with dismay. 
Pope Gregory VIII. at once proceeded to induce the monarchs to 
take up arms to recover the holy land. The monarchs themselves, 
recognizing the necessities of the occasion, hastened to heal their 
differences, where any existed, and to proceed unanimously in the 
common cause. The enmities of France and England presenting an 
obstacle to the absence of either monarch from his kingdom, Rich- 
ard I. and Philip Augustus solemnly agreed to lay aside their differ- 
ences and embark together in the holy war. But the first monarch 
to go forward in the third crusade was the German emperor, 
Frederic Barbarossa. In his march through the eastern empire he 
was subjected to all the annoyances which had injured the former 
expeditions. But Frederic with great resolution crossed the 
Bosphorus, defeated the Moslems, captured the city of Ieoniuin, 
and spread the terror of his arms and the military glory of his name 
even to the court of Saladin. In the height of his renown, having 



202 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

died from a cold contracted by bathing in the Cyduns, his troops 
advanced to Antioch, there to await the arrival of the other crusaders. 

The kings of France and England, however, wisely deciding to 
avoid the evils incident to a passage through the eastern empire, 
embarked, Philip at Genoa, and Eichard at Marseilles, and met 
again at Messina in Sicily. But, unfortunately, during their stay 
here, animosities arose between them, which threatened the destruc- 
tion of the enterprise. 

Philip, however, advanced to Palestine, and, aided by the re- 
mainder of Frederic's army, commenced the siege of Acre. At 
Cyprus Eichard was detained, a terrible storm having dispersed his 
fleet, and stranded on that island vessels in which were Eichard' s 
sister Eleanor, and the princess of Navarre, to whom he was engaged 
to be married. The princesses and crews the king of Cyprus treated 
with rigor. Eichard, in retaliation, landed an army and in two battles 
subjugated the island and took the king prisoner. He then, having 
married the princess Berengaria, joined the crusaders before Acre. 

But Philip Augustus, displeased with the delay of Eichard and 
also with his marriage, by which his sister Adelais was disappointed, 
returned to France; leaving, however, 10,000 men under command 
of the duke of Burgundy. Near Azotus Eichard obtained a victory 
over Saladin, which is attributed to his personal prowess, as the 
crusading army was nearly defeated when this result was achieved. 
He then captured Caeserea and Jaffa and advanced within view of 
Jerusalem: But being discouraged by the dissensions of the camp, 
his wasting numbers and diminished resources, he concluded with 
Saladin a truce for three years, on condition that Acre, Jaffa and 
the cities conquered by the crusaders should remain in their posses- 
sion and that the Christians should have free access to Jerusalem. 

Some think that had Eichard been as discreet as he was brave 
he might have established the Christians firmly again in Palestine. 
He was one of the strongest of men and the most courageous of 
knights. Of almost giant size and strength, cased in the metallic 
armor of the times, his might in the battle-field made him an host in 
himself. One day, learning that his garrison at Jaffa was in jeop- 
ardy, Eichard hastened with a small body of troops to relieve it, 
rushed with his men into the thickest ranks of the enemy, overcame 
everything that opposed him, and rescued two of his brave knights 
who had been taken prisoners by the Saracens. On one occasion, 
as he was surrounded by a band of the enemy's soldiers, he single- 
handed cut his way through them. With such admiration and ter- 



PAPAL SUPEEMACY. 203 

ror did he impress his enemies that fifty years afterwards his name 
is said to have been used in the east to frighten unruly children. 

It is said of Saladin that on one occasion, perceiving his men to 
flee, he inquired the cause ; and being told that the English King 
had himself driven them from the city, asked, " Which is he?" 
He was pointed to a little hillock where Richard and his men had 
halted. "What/' said he, "on foot among his servants. This is 
not as it should be; ' ' and immediately he sent him a horse. 

After the return of Richard and the death of Saladin which oc- 
curred a year later, the Christians of Palestine enjoyed a season of 
repose. Saladin is represented to have been the most humane and 
sagacious prince that ever filled a Mahometan throne. When he 
perceived his death to be near, impressed with the worthlessness of 
earthly grandeur, he ordered the standard which had been borne in 
his victorious marches to be removed and a shroud to be substituted 
in its place. This he commanded to be carried through the streets, 
the carriers proclaiming: "Behold what Saladin, the mighty con- 
queror, carries with him of all his dominions ! " 

Saladin was nephew of Shirkoh, a general of Kurdistan in the 
service of Noureddin, the Caliph of all the provinces between the 
Tigris and the Nile. At the command of Noureddin he had accom- 
panied his uncle in an expedition into Egypt, and on the death of 
this uncle was promoted to his place. Saladin at length threw off 
his allegiance to Al Malel, the successor of Noureddin. He made 
himself master of Egypt, invaded and conquered Aleppo, Damas- 
cus and Diarbekir; Arabia, as well as Tripoli and Tunis, acknowl- 
edged his authority. Such he was when he proceeded to wrest the 
kingdom of Jerusalem from the Christians, the result of which pro- 
ceedings we have seen to his death. 

As preliminary to the fourth Crusade I may say that the eastern 
empire, already long before stripped of its Asiatic possessions, was 
now further curtailed by the secession of Bulgaria, a state which 
had for more than two centuries acknowledged its supremacy, but 
now declared its independence. A prince of the Comnenian dy- 
nasty at Constantinople was ruling in Cyprus, but Richard of En- 
gland conquered him and gave his kingdom to Guy of Lusignan, 
the late king of Jerusalem. 

Alexius Angelus had usurped the throne of Isaac Angelus, his 
brother, at Constantinople, and consigning him to prison life, de- 
prived him of his eyesight. Alexius, junior, the son of Isaac, hav- 
ing escaped, went to Rome to implore the aid of Pope Innocent 



204 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

III., and there sought to engage the western potentates to employ 
their arms in the restoration of his father. 

It happened at this time that many of the nobles of France and 
Germany, the flower of the knighthood of the west, were assembled 
with their followers at Venice with the design of procuring convey- 
ance to Palestine for a fourth Crusade. Alexius proceeded to 
Venice and besought, on behalf of his much injured father the 
aid of the gallant knights. Dandolo, the aged but still energetic 
doge of Venice, warmly seconded his request; and the result was 
that a large body of the crusaders, whose leader was Baldwin, count 
of Flanders, embarked with the Venetians for Constantinople. 

The crusaders, having destroyed the defending fleet, rode trium- 
phantly into the harbor of Constantinople. Being at least 20,000 
in number well equipped warriors, they besieged the city, which is 
said to have had a population of 400,000 people. After one at- 
tempt at a sally Alexius Angelus fled secretly from the city, when 
the nobles released the blinded Isaac from prison, placed him upon 
the throne and opened the gates to the besiegers. The conditions 
of the succor promised by young Alexius were the submission of 
the eastern empire to the pope, aid in the holy war, and a contribu- 
tion of 200,000 marks to his deliverers. At these conditions the 
nobles were displeased and especially irritated at the thought of their 
having to surrender the independence of their church to the pope. 

They refused to fulfill the conditions given by the young Alexius, 
and the Latins became dissatisfied and waxed insolent in their con- 
duct. The Grseco-Ronians petitioned the senate to give them a more 
worthy emperor and offered the crown to all the senators in succession. 

Now Alexius Ducas, surnamed Mazoufle, stirred up a revolt and 
treacherously obtaining possession of young Alexius, murdered 
him, and assumed the sovereignty. The aged emperor, Isaac 
Angelus, died of grief. Mazoufle, at first, having possession of the 
city endeavored to defend it against the Latins, whose demands he 
refused to satisfy. They besieged, and, having again captured the 
city, they plundered it, the most precious works of art being de- 
stroyed by the hands, not of barbarians, but the Latin soldiery. 

Now in possession the victorious crusaders elected as their em- 
peror Baldwin, count of Flanders: and to another of their leaders, 
the marquis of Montserrat, they gave the sovereignty of Asiatic 
Greece and the island of Crete. Baldwin was soon called upon 
to defend the empire he had conquered; his Thracian subjects hav- 
ing revolted he marched against them and was defeated and taken 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 205 

prisoner. Under his successors, Henry, Peter, Eobert, John and 
Baldwin II., this now Latin empire lasted 57 years (1204-1261), 
which was the length of time passed by their six successive em- 
perors; when the government was again recovered by the Graeco- 
Romans, Michael Palaeolgus, a man of exalted worth, having 
become emperor. Another such nobleman, Theodore Lascaris, 
founded a kingdom whereof Nice was the seat, upon that territory 
taken from the Turks by the first crusaders over one hundred and 
sixty years before. 

Frederic II., the son of Henry VI., emperor of Germany, being 
yet a minor on the death of his father, in 1217, his uncle Philip, 
duke of Swabia, was appointed regent. The Sultan of Egypt having 
reduced the Christians of Palestine to great distress, they earnestly 
sought aid from their western brethren. In their aid went for- 
ward Andrew of Hungary in conduct of the fifth crusade, an ex- 
pedition, which eventually proved fruitless. The pope, however, 
in order to engage Frederic in the cause of the eastern Christians, 
gave him, on his coming of age, in marriage, Yolanda, the daughter 
of John of Brienne, the titular king of Jerusalem, with that king- 
dom as her dower. But Frederic, notwithstanding his engagement, 
manifested a reluctance to depart, until the pope's patience becom- 
ing exhausted, he pronounced his excommunication. Upon this 
Frederic renewed the wars of the investitures, which had now for a 
time been discontinued between the Guelphs and Ghibelines, com- 
pelled the pope to leave Rome and overran his territories. He 
then proceeded to carry out his engagement and so started for the 
holy land on the sixth crusade, without, however, the sentence of 
excommunication having been revoked. Still his crusade was 
remarkably successful. The Sultan of Egypt ceded to him Jerusa- 
lem with several other cities whereof he now, of course became titu- 
lar king: and before his return he concluded with the Sultan a 
truce for ten years. Pope Gregory IX. interdicted his ecclesiastics 
from crowning Frederic king of Jerusalem; but he took himself the 
crown from the altar and placed it upon his own head. How Frederic 
was afterwards treated by the popes I have recorded elsewhere. 

Louis IX., the son of Louis VIII., king of France, being a minor 
on his father's death, his mother, Blanche of Castile, a lady of a 
vigorous mind acted as regent. He led on the seventh crusade, 
in 1226, for the benefit of the Christians of the east now in distress. 
Against Egypt, as being the key of the position, he first directed 
his arms; but his army, reduced there by pestilence, was defeated 



206 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

by the Moslems and himself made prisoner. For the city of 
Damietta, whereof his army had obtained possession he was ex- 
changed. He then, having passed four years in Palestine, returned 
to France. He was not long home, however, before he fitted out 
another expedition and departed upon the eighth crusade which 
was the last of those expeditions, in company with Edward I., the son 
of Henry III., king of England. On his way Louis invaded the king- 
dom of Tunis, for the purpose of converting its Mahometan monarch 
and people to the Catholic faith ; but both himself and the bulk of 
his army succumbed to a pestilence which then ravaged that country. 
At the summons of the pope Edward I. went on this expedition, 
in company with his queen Eleanor of Spain to the holy land. But 
having arrived there he found himself to a great degree helpless 
without the assistance of the army of Louis, which he had calcu- 
lated upon, but which had disappeared in the pestilence on the way. 
Yet Edward found in Palestine various occasions for the display of 
his bravery, as did also his wife Eleanor. At one time he is said 
to have come near falling the victim of a poisoned arrow, a Mos- 
lem having stabbed him in his tent. But his beloved Eleanor sucked 
out the poison, nursed and tended him so that he recovered slowly 
from its effects; 1270-1274. This was the Edward who having 
returned from Palestine to England conceived the design of uniting 

O DO 

under the one English government all the island of Britain. 

Explanation of Chapter XVIIth of Revelation. 

Rev. Ch. XVII. , 1-3 : ''And there came one of the seven angels 
which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying : Come hither ; 
I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth 
upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed 
fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk 
with the wine of her fornication. " Thus far we have the simple idea 
presented of a symbolic woman, sitting upon many symbolic waters, 
committing symbolical fornication with the kings or rulers of the 
earth; and symbolically intoxicating the inhabitants of the eartn 
with the wine of her fornication. In the last verse of this chapter, 
v. 18, this symbolic woman is explained to be the great city which 
( lit. ) hath a kingdom over the kings of the earth. The city of Rome, 
we know, was long acknowledged the mistress of the world, as 
having been conquered and ruled by her sons. Thus Rome had a 
dominion or kingdom over the rulers of the earth, a real substantial 
one. The Roman Catholic religion claims, and has for many cen- 
turies claimed, a dominion over all earthly kingdoms and dominions, 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 207 

which dominion it has wielded no less effectually than the old city of 
Eome did her temporal power. While the Catholic Church, as 
established at Constantinople, always acknowledged the Emperor as 
its supreme head, which headship, as well of the Church as of the 
State, the Emperors claimed even over Rome itself, until the final 
extinction of the Empire by the Turks in the fifteenth century ; the 
Catholic Church, as it grew up and was established at Rome and in 
the western provinces of the Empire, on their gradually falling off 
and seceding from the central government at Constantinople , acknowl- 
edged the bishop of Rome as it supreme head. This supreme head- 
ship the bishops of Rome assumed to themselves, when they gradually 
became free from the power of Constantinople, and were favored and 
supported by the rulers that sprung up in the western provinces, 
especially the rulers of France and Germany. The fundamental 
and general doctrines of the Greek and Latin branches of the Catholic 
Church are the same; they differ mainly as to the headship of the 
Church ; and this difference sprung up insensibly with the gradual 
aggrandizement of the bishop of Rome, which culminated in his 
assumption of superiority, not only over all his brother bishops of 
the Empire, but, as it were, over the Emperor himself, and all earthly 
rulers. In the year 1452, the year immediately preceding that on 
which Constantinople was taken by the Turks, a union of the two 
branches of the Catholic Church was effected, and the act of union 
subscribed in the Church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, by the 
representatives of both . There still continued, however, differences 
of opinion between them as to minor points. There are also some 
differences between the two Churches, which, doubtless, arise mainly 
from the difference of headship or government which, we know, 
possesses the power of originating or setting aside certain institu- 
tions in the Church. Thus, while the clergy of the Greek branch 
of the Catholic Church exercise the right of marriage according to 
their discretion, somewhat after the manner of the primitive 
Christian clergy, those of the Latin branch are prohibited by their 
peculiar laws from marrying, and the law with respect to the 
celibacy of the clergy was established in the Church of Rome by 
the decree of Pope Gregory VII., about A. D., 1075. 

Verses 3-6 : " So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilder- 
ness, and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of 
names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the 
woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with 
gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, 
full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication ; and upon her 



208 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the 
Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the Earth. " Here 
we have the compound idea presented of a scarlet-colored wild beast 
(drjpiov) having seven heads and ten horns, and a woman gorgeously 
apparelled in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold, precious 
stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abomina- 
tions, and a conspicuous name written on her forehead, seated upon 
him. This compound idea represents the Church and the State 
which, in the case of the Roman Empire, we have had represented 
under a simple symbolical idea of a wild beast (Orjp(ov). This wild 
beast also had seven heads, which indicate completeness of dominion, 
completeness of human wisdom, and, in the ancient idea, the Deity 
in relation to man or God and man united in one human being, or 
more, as the case may be. But this chapter itself offers an explana- 
tion of the seven heads. In verse 9, it says: "The seven heads 
are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth." And in verse 
15, it says: "The waters which thou sawest where the woman 
sitteth are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues ;" for in 
verse 1 it is said that " the great whore sitteth upon many waters." 
The city of Rome is built upon seven hills; it has always been de- 
nominated the " City of the seven hills." The woman, in verse 18, 
being said to be that great city "that reigneth over the kings of the 
earth ' ' (which in the time of the delivery of the prophecy it certainly 
was), and the seven heads the seven hills upon which the woman 
sitteth, leaves no doubt that the City of Rome is especially meant 
to be designated. Every object in existence must have a center, 
however far it may extend in every or any direction from that 
center, and the woman, the city, the Catholic Church, being said to 
be seated upon the seven hills, shows that the church would be 
especially represented at Rome, however far it or its influence might 
extend over the face of the earth; in short, it shows that the 
supreme head of that Church would have his seat in Rome. As the 
old City of Rome ruled over the nations of the earth, so the Church 
of* Rome, represented here as a city, etc., would also exercise do- 
minion over the nations of the earth. 

This beast is also characterized as having ten horns, which are not 
represented to be crowned, as those were which pertained to the 
beast spoken of in chapter XIII. But in verse 12 they are ex- 
plained thus: " And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings 
which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kin^s 
one hour with the beast." These kings being represented as having 
no power as yet means, that as kings, or rather kingdoms, they 



PAPAL SUPEEMACY. 209 

were not in existence at the time the prophecy was delivered ; and 
their receiving power as kings one hour with the beast indicates that 
their continuance, when they should arise, would be but short. 
Speaking historically, the time of the rising of these kings or king- 
doms would show the time of the rising of the power here symbol- 
ized. The number ten would also in general symbolize the com- 
plete number of nations which would, in any age, yield obedience 
to the Roman Catholic Church. This beast is also of a scarlet 
color, and full of names of blasphemy. Purple or scarlet is the 
color worn by kings and emperors, signifying their office, and thus 
this denotes the beast to represent secular power. It was by Pepin, 
king of France, that the sovereignty of the Exarchate of Ravenna, 
in which Rome was included, was given to the Pope in the last half 
of the eighth century. This donation is said to have been granted 
in supreme and absolute dominion to the chair of St. Peter by 
Pepin, but the grant was only verbal; and the world beheld a 
Christian bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince : 
the choice of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of 
taxes, and the possession and wealth of the palace of Ravenna, 
formerly the residence of the Exarchs. The inhabitants of the 
duchy of Spoleto on the dissolution of the Lombard kingdom 
through the power of the French king, declared themselves also the 
subjects of St. Peter, and completed by this voluntary surrender the 
circle of the ecclesiastical State. That circle was enlarged to an 
indefinite extent by the verbal donations of Charlemagne, the son 
and successor of Pepin, in the same century, who in the first trans- 
ports of his victory over the Italian Lombards, despoiled himself 
and the Greek Emperor of the cities and islands which formerly 
belonged to the Exarchate.* 

But according to the prophecy there was to be much remarkable 
about this beast, and there is the utmost particularity in explaining, 
so that no one might mistake him. Verses 8,10,11 : The angel says 
to the prophet: "The beast that thou saw est was, and is not; and 
shall ascend out of .the abyss and go into perdition ; and they that 

* For accepting this gift of temporal sovereignty the ambition and avarice of the Roman 
Pontiffs have been severely condemned. An humble Christian minister or bishop, it was 
thought, should have rejected an earthly kingdom which the Gospel did not authorize him to 
seek, and which it was not easy for him to govern without renouncing the virtues of his minis- 
terial office. Perhaps an honest subject or even a generous enemy of the Eastern Emperor 
would have been less desirous to participate in the spoils of a barbarian conqueror; and If, :is 
it is said, the Emperor of Constantinople, his lawful master, had entrusted Pope Stephen to 
solicit in his name from the French prince the restitution of the Exarchate, we cannot absolve 
the Pope from the reproach of treachery with which he has been branded. To the importun- 
ities of the Emperor, however, Pepin piously replied that no human consideration should 
tempt him to resume the gift which he had conferred on the Roman pontiff for the remission 
of his sins and the salvation of his soul. Hence we see that the Pope's true position in the 
scale of secular rulers is that he is the representative of the Exarch. 

14 



210 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES , ETC. 

dwell upon the earth shall wonder whose names were not written in 
the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they behold 
the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. — And there are seven 
kings ; five are fallen, and one is, the other is not yet come ; and 
when he cometh he must continue a short space. And the beast 
that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven and 
goeth into perdition." All this has reference to the governments 
of Rome at successive stages of its history since its mythical founda- 
tion ; for back further than the history or the mythology takes him the 
prophet does not go in search for the different kinds of Roman Gov- 
ernment, however many different kinds of rulers there may have ex- 
isted for Rome, or the city now called Rome, of which we have no 
record in mythology or history. " The beast that thou sawest was, and 
is not, and shall ascend out of the abyss and go into perdition." This 
means that the Roman Imperium did exist, as all the world had reason 
to know ; but at the period to which the prophecy now refers it could 
not be said properly to exist ; and yet that it did at the same time 
exist in a certain sense, as represented in the Papacy and its sup- 
porters. The beast is said to rise out of the abyss, that is, this com- 
bination of power was to arise out of an unsettled state of affairs, in 
which for some time there should be no settled government. Thus 
it was that this combination of government arose to Rome from the 
wars and commotions and the wide-spread disorder and desolation 
which prevailed at Rome and in the western part of the Empire. 
Rome was twice besieged and finally sacked by the Goths, under 
Alaric, in the year 410. It was sacked by the Vandals under Gen- 
seric, in 455 ; by Ricimer and Anthemius in 472 ; and during the 
reign of Justinian, 527-565, it was taken and retaken five times by 
the Goths ; after which the Exarchs were appointed, who governed 
the Exarchate of Ravenna, which included Rome, for about two cen- 
turies, until the conquest of it by Pepin and Charlemagne, 750-800. 
The eunuch Narses, the general of the Emperor Justinian, was the 
first Exarch. He who reads the history of the Roman Empire of 
those times will understand that the symbol "abyss" (translated in 
our Bible " bottomless pit ") is aptly applied to designate the state 
of affairs during that age in Rome, Italy, and the west. And in verse 
3 of the chapter we are considering (XVII.), the place where this 
scarlet-colored beast is seen by the prophet to arise is represented as 
a wilderness, a scene of desolation and devastation far and wide. 
According to the historian the campagna of Rome was at this time 
reduced to the state of " a dreary wilderness, in which the land is 
barren, the waters are impure, and the air infectious." * But this 

* Millman's Gibbon's Rome, eh. XLV. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



211 



beast was to go into perdition. Perdition literally means " losing," 
and the going into perdition here means that this power, after it had 
attained its greatest height, should gradually decay and wane till its 
final consummation. This we see to have been fulfilled to a large ex- 
tent. The first great falling oft from this system was in the Protes- 
tant Reformation ; then we see it in the destruction and humiliation 
of those secular powers that so long supported the Papacy, as France 
and Austria, and in the loss of the civil power by the Pope himself 
lately. The first great blow which the Papacy received was from 
the defection of the Reformers in the sixteenth century, by which it 
lost such an immense power and prestige ; and since that time it has 
been continually losing directly or indirectly in consequence of the 
power of those reformed nations ; and it will continue to lose, as 
according to the prophecy, until its power is reduced to an almost 
insensible force secularly ; after which it will appear to continue some- 
what as the Jewish since the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophecy 
shows that this combination of power should wax and wane much as 
the moon does. " And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder 
whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the founda- 
tion of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, 
and yet is." This is the same reference as that in ch. XIII. 3, and 
here it can clearly be seen what the object was which attracted the 
attention of mankind away (or behind) from the great Roman Em- 
peror in his palace at Constantinople : it was a combination of his 
principal subjects, ecclesiastical as well as civil, of which the most 
wondered at was the bishop ot Rome, who now had defected from 
him and set up a government of their own within his old dominions. 
But only those whose names were not written in the Book of Life 
(the Lamb's Book of Life), from the foundation of the world won- 
dered at or worshipped this beast. God's children, the true and 
humble followers of the Lamb of God, do not wonder at or admire 
such objects, are not attracted by them. Knowing that what makes 
such objects wonderful in the eyes of the world is derived from the 
world's craft and wickedness and vanity. 

The pilgrimages which were performed to the tombs of the apos- 
tles Peter and Paul; the miracles which were wrought at these 
tombs, and at the tombs of the saints and martyrs in the seven-hilled 
city ; as well as the great influence and power the Pope had acquired 
from the sacred and secular hierarchy of the Empire, were the princi- 
pal causes of this great wonder at, or admiration of the beast. Kings 
and Emperors, and all who felt the burden of their sins, and pos- 
sessed a sufficient amount of money to defray the expenses of their 
journey, and their absolution, flocked to the holy City, as well to be 



212 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

relieved of their sins by the Holy Father as to see the great wonders 
which were there exhibited. According to a vague tradition, two 
Jewish teachers, a fisherman and a tent-maker, had formerly been ex 
ecutei in the circus of Nero, and at the end of five centuries, their 
genuine or fictitious relics were worshipped as the Palladium of Pa- 
pal Christian Rome. The pilgrims of the East and West resorted to 
the holy threshold ; but the shrines of the apostles were guarded by 
miracles and invisible terrors ; and it was not without apprehension 
that the pious Catholic approached the object of his worship. It was 
dangerous to behold, it was fatal to touch the relics of the saints ; 
and those who, from the purest motives, presumed to disturb the re- 
pose of the sanctuary were affrighted by visions or punished with sud- 
den death. The extravagant request of an Empress who wished to 
deprive the Romans of their sacred treasure, the head of St. Paul, 
was rejected with the deepest abhorrence ; and the Pope asserted, 
probably with truth, that a linen which had been sanctified in the 
neighborhood of his body, or the filings of his chain, which it was 
sometimes easy and sometimes impossible to obtain, possessed an 
equal degree of miraculous virtue. 

For a short time only the feeble successors of Charlemagne re- 
ceived their crown from the hands of the Pope ; and the German Em- 
perors, as mentioned before, for a period of about five hundred years 
(962-1452), received their crown in that way, and at the same time 
the title of Kings of Rome and Italy. They always, however, in 
coming to be crowned, appeared with an army before the gates of 
Rome, and received the imperial crown from the Pope, not as a vol- 
untary gift on his part, but as that which belonged to them by right, 
which right they were prepared to assert by force, as well as that of 
their kingship of Rome and Italy. It was on account of his ghostly 
or ecclesiastical power and influence, rather than on account of his 
civil power, that the bishop of Rome was so much wondered at. He 
was also wondered at on account of this, that in his capacity of a 
civil ruler, he appeared the real and actual representative of the old 
kings and Caesars of Rome ; although he was in reality merely de- 
pendent upon the secular princes who were the real kings of Rome 
and Italy, and he the real representative of the Exarch of Ravenna, 
the lieutenant of the Eastern Emperor. From about the latter part 
of the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Pope's 
temporal sovereignty was more independent than at any previous 
period, though the Pope may from long ere this time be regarded as 
an independent temporal sovereign. " And there were seven kings " 
five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come ; and when 
he cometh he must continue a short space." These seven kings, as 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 213 

we have before mentioned, refer to the seven successive forms of 
government which Rome had as far back as history or mythology 
takes us. These were in the order of their succession : Kings, Con- 
suls, Dictators, Decemvirs, Consular-Tribunes, Emperors, 
the Exarchs of Ravenna, whose government was to con- 
tinue a 'short space (it did continue nearly two centuries) ; and 
finally the combination of power, represented in the Papacy and the 
civil rulers of the West, was the eighth, but principally the Pope. But 
this eighth ruler was to be of the seven ; that is, the Pope, as the in- 
strument of the Western princes, in his capacity of a civil ruler, rep- 
resented the Exarch of Ravenna, who in his time was invested by 
the Emperor with the civil and ecclesiastical power ; and thus the 
Pope was really one of the seven rulers of Rome ; but in his capacity 
of ecclesiastical head of the Catholic Church, a ghostly ruler, he 
was different from all that had preceded him, and from the Exarch, 
and thus constituted an eighth. These seven systems of government 
which we have enumerated were the actual systems of government 
which ruled Rome as far as extant literary records inform us ; but 
there is no good reason why the number seven may not denote the 
complete number of systems of government which ruled Rome 
down to the rule of the Germanic-Papal combination. 

But as to the ten horns which were to receive power as kings, 
one hour with the beast ; verses 13, 14, 16, 17 say: " These have one 
mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. These 
shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them ; 
for he is Lord of lords and King of kings ; and they that are with 
him are called, and chosen, and faithful. — And the ten horns which 
thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and make her 
desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire. 
For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree and 
give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be 
fulfilled." As to the time when these kingdoms arose which were 
symbolized by the ten horns, it appears, according to Mede and others, 
that in the year following that in which Rome was sacked by the 
Vandals and Italy was overrun by the barbarians, which would be 
the year 456, ten barbaric kingdoms arose in the western part of the 
Empire ; and if this be so it serves as a time-mark to show when this 
power began sensibly to appear. There were many considerations 
which influenced these barbarians to profess tbo doctrines of the 
Catholic Church, and accept the bishop of Rorau as their spiritual 
father. Mosheim says : "The incursions and triumphs of the bar- 
barians were so far from bein^ prejudicial to the rising dominions of 
the Roman Pontiff, that they rather contributed to its advancement. 



214 CREATOE AND COSMOS; Oft, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

For the kings who penetrated into the Empire were only solicitous 
about the methods of giving a sufficient degree of stability to their 
respective governments. And when they perceived the subjection 
o^ the multitude to the bishops, and the dependence of the bishops 
ipon the Roman Pontiff, they immediately resolved to reconcile this 
ghostly ruler to their interests by loading him with benefits and 
honors of various kinds." * He also observes that " the declining 
power and supine indolence of the Emperors left the Pope's authority 
without control." It will, of course, be remembered that there existed 
frequently disputes between the bishops and clergy of the Roman 
world, and that their referring their cases on some occasions to the 
arbitration of the bishop of Rome, as to the highest tribunal, had 
given that bishop an acknowledged superiority over all the sacerdotal 
orders. Now, there is no doubt that the little horn mentioned in 
Daniel VII. 8, 20, 21, &c, as springing up among the ten horns, in 
which were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great 
things, symbolized this combination of power which we are consider- 
ing in this chapter. But whether the ten horns mentioned in Daniel 
as being on the head of the beast, and among which, and in the 
stead of three of which, the little horn springs up, or whether the 
ten horns, mentioned in Rev. XIII. 1, as being on the seven heads of 
the beast, mean the same as the ten horns upon the seven heads of 
the beast, of Rev. XVII., which we are now considering, is quite a 
different thing. In the first place, the representation in Rev. XIII. 
means the same as that in Dan. VII., only with this difference, that 
the one in Daniel symbolizes the whole Roman Empire, Pagan as 
well as Christian ; while that in Revelation XIII. symbolizes the 
Christian Roman Empire, beginning with Constantine. Either of 
these representations, therefore, symbolizes the whole Roman Empire. 
But it is seen that the combination we are now considering is only 
a constituent part of the Roman Empire, as symbolized by the little 
horn, before which rising, three fell, as in Dan. VII. ; and by the 
wounded head healed or revived, as in Rev. XIII. 3. In either case 
it is only a part of the whole, or a power arising out of part of the 
Roman Empire, but doubtless embracing the whole of it for 
a time, as resulted from the crusades, that is meant. While 
therefore, the ten horns of the beast of Dan. VII. and of Rev. XIII. 
symbolize all the nations that would, at any time, be included in the 
Roman Empire, the ten horns appertaining to this beast of ch. XVII. 
have a particular reference to certain nations which should at some 
time yield obedience tc the bishop of Rome, in his character of head 



• Mosheim's Eccles. History Cent V. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 215 

of the Roman Catholic Church. And their continuing to support 
the Papacy for only the short space of time, represented symbolically 
by an hour, might merely prove the characteristic fickleness and 
freedom of thought of the barbarian nations which arose on the 
desolations of Italy and the West, and which, professing obedience 
to the religion of the Roman Pontiff and to himself, were continually 
warring with the Emperor of the East, and with each other, and for 
the city of Rome during a great part of the time which intervened 
between their rise in the middle of the fifth century, and the con- 
quest of Italy and Rome by Pepin and Charlemagne in the latter 
half of the eighth century. So many times was Rome sacked and 
pillaged by the Goths and Vandals, and others, during the four cen- 
turies which intervened between Honorius and Charlemagne, that, 
represented symbolically as a whorish woman, it might be said, they 
" ate her flesh, and burned her with fire." 

But it being said in the prophecy that these ten kings, after hav- 
ing given their support to the beast during the space of a symbolic 
hour, they would turn round and maltreat the whore so effectually, 
it appears plain that the Germanic Confederation is meant, or the 
princes of the Germanic Diet, who afterwards would see fit to lead 
the van of the Protestant Reformation. It is very certain there is a 
particular reference to the nations in which the Reformation took 
place ; at first, for the space of six centuries, supporting so ardently 
the Church of Rome, and fighting her battles in propagating her 
doctrines by the civil sword ; gratifying the vanity of the Roman 
Pontiff by condescending to receive their imperial crown from his 
hands : and then turning round and opposing with all their might 
the Holy Mother Church, and the holy father with the same stout- 
ness with which they had ever obeyed and supported them. " These 
have one mind and shall give their power and strength unto the 
beast," which is excellently represented in the unity of Catholic 
and orthodox mind which pervaded that august body of Catholic 
princes assembled in the Germanic Diet, supporting, for six hundred 
years, the power of the Church and the Pope. Three conspicuous 
nations fell before the Papacy during its gradual rise, which may 
correspond to the three horns which fell before the little horn, as ac- 
cording to Dan. VII. These were the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards, 
the last-named of which were fast accomplishing the conquest of the 
Exarchate of Ravenna when they were overcome by Pepin, King of 
France, who handed over the Exarchate to the Pope by way of 
donation. The power of these three nations over Rome and Italy, 
or, at least, over the Exarchate, was so effectually eradicated after 
the conquests of Pepin and Charlemagne, as to have been fairly des- 



216 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ignated in Dan. VII. by the three horns being plucked up by the 
roots.* " These," that is, the horns, " shall make war with the 
Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them ; for he is Lord of Lords, 
and King of Kings, and they that are with him are called and chosen 
and faithful." Happy they who are overcome by the Spirit of the 
Lamb of God. Happy they who deny themselves their perverse pas- 
sions, their carnal lusts and their wicked inclinations and disposi- 
tions, and cultivate in themselves the meek and gentle, and peace- 
able spirit by which the Lamb is characterized. Thus being, thus 
doing, this is the Lamb of God. For many centuries did the princes 
and potentates of Christendom wage warfare in behalf of the Roman 
Catholic Church, until at length the day of the Reformation dawned 
and some light shone into men's hearts, some sparks of freedom kin- 
dled in their souls ; and some threw off the shackles of their super- 
stition and slavery, and resolved to become more free. It is men's 
right and privilege to become perfect in liberty ; where the spirit of 
truth is, there is perfect liberty ; where the spirit of superstition, of 
idolatry of any kind, or of man-worship prevails, there is the basest, 
the most burdensome, and the most abject slavery. Stand fast, 
therefore, and assert your freedom in the spirit of truth and god- 
liness. "For God hath put in their hearts, to fulfil his will, and to 
agree and give their kingdom unto the beast until the words of God 
shall be fulfilled." God, by which term here we mean the infinite 
Deity, put in men's hearts to do just as they will choose ; for it 
happens that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. Men 
are free moral agents : if they willingly believe lies and falsehood, 
and act accordingly, they do it of their own free will, and the devil 
assists them mightily in their course to perfection in wickedness. If 
they choose the good, and holy, and true, which they can do with 
infinitely greater benefit to themselves, b} r practising self-denial and 
cultivating all the character of godliness, God then assists them 
mightily to their perfection in godliness, God never incites men to 
do evil ; the devil never to what is good. And, to sum it all up, 
men may learn that the Deity leaves them to be free agents, and that 
they are themselves the authors of their own sin and wickedness; 
and that by choosing and doing the good, they are the authors of 
their godliness, which God will delight in assisting them to per- 
fect. The Deity may be said to put in men's hearts whatever dispo- 
sition there may happen to be in them, for no disposition can exist 



* Bishop Newton makes the three horns which fell before the little horn to be the Exar- 
chate of Ravenna, the Kingdom of the Lombards, and the State of Rome. The application we 
have made is the correct one, for it is very easily seen that the Pope stood for the Exarch, and 
he, jointly with the western potentates, governed the State of Rome. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 217 

there without him, and he knows from the beginning all 
things that will take place. But that the true God, the Father 
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, was not the author of 
much that this terrible system did in its progress, will be- 
come clear as we proceed. But God knew and could 
foretell what these men and nations would do, and how all things 
would result. The devil, the spirit of evil, is not wont to fore- 
tell much that is true; falsehood is characteristic of him; he is a 
liar, and the father of it. It happens in the history of religion, as 
well as in civil history, and in that of individual life, that the evil is 
mingled with the good in human character and action, and the one 
may be set over against the other, so as in some cases to balance each 
other, in some cases the one or the other preponderating. Will not 
human beings, therefore, begin to cultivate the spirit of godliness, 
developing all the graces of the true Christian character : at tho 
same time that they cultivate firm and unwavering faith in the power 
and benevolence of the Deity, and the utmost confidence in His good- 
ness, which greatly assists one not only in being good and doing good, 
but in all the labors, the circumstances, and the vicissitudes of life ? 
In this symbolical woman there is also an especial reference to 
the false and blasphemous practices of knighthood in the ages of 
chivalry, when there was such an unwarranted degree of respect paid 
to the female sex of the higher classes as to amount to a species of 
worship, and was thus dishonoring to the Deity and blasphemous in 
his eyes.* This is practised also in our own age to an unwarranta- 
ble and reprehensible degree ; and God does not look upon such 
practices with allowance : nor will he be pleased to have his honor 
prostituted to human beings or to any visible things. Females of a 
considerate and a godly character will always be contented with a 
fair degree of attention and respect, nor can they ever conscientiously 
before God accept or countenance anything more. They should 
themselves become the first reformers of the false and reprehensible 
manners of the age in this respect, and not employ their arts in mak- 
ing men even more idolatrous, and they will thus become the bene- 
factors of mankind, the restorers of true virtue among men, and the 
vindicators of the honors of their God ; and for their pains they will 
reap contentment of spirit and an eternal meed of happiness, which 
the vanities of the world can never afford them. The Church of 
Rome, and certain other branches of the Church Catholic, 1 av3 al- 
ways made great use, an unwarrantable use, of the female agency 
in advancing their cause and supporting and upbuilding their 



* See Hallam's "Middle Ages;" and Zimmerman's History of Germany, vol. Ill, ch. VL 



218 CEEATCK AND COSMOS ; OB, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Churches. They should know that it is high time to give up the 
worship of woman, which has long prevailed widely, and to substitute 
or restore the worship of the true God, the infinite and invisible 
Deity alone, in its stead. Verse 6, Ch. XVII : " And I saw the wo- 
man drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the 
martyrs of Jesus ; and when I saw her I wondered with great ad 
miration." This represents the Church of Rome, here symbolized 
by an intoxicated woman, as gloated with the blood of all those who 
during the long period of her ascendency she, through her agencies 
and supporters, caused to be put to death and persecuted variously 
for non-conformity with her principles or doctrines, for having any 
principles or doctrines, than those which she saw fit to communicate, 
or because she suspected that they had or cultivated principles 
or doctrines or cherished opinions which she did not approve. These 
persecutions and slaughters were carried on by that system of Church 
and State wherever it was established and wherever its influence and 
power extended for a series of centuries, as will be partially under- 
stood from what we have shown in Part First of the work and the 
few illustrations which follow.* 

The Inquisition. 

In the eleventh century Europe was greatly infested with here- 
tics. They were reputed Manichaeans, and spread through many 
countries. In Italy they were called Paterini or Catheri, that is, the 
Pure. In France they were called Albigenses, Bulgarians and other 
names, sometimes after the names of the countries in which they re- 
sided. Their dangerous doctrine was first discovered by a certain 
priest called Heribert, and a Norman nobleman ; upon which Robert, 
King of France, assembled a Council at Orleans to devise methods for 
reclaiming those harmless people, not surely from the error of their 
ways ; but they, remaining obstinate, were at length condemned to 
be burned alive. Their enemies acknowledged the sincerity of their 
piety, and confessed that they were blackened by accusations which 
wire manifestly false. But they were deemed unsound in their 
speculations concerning God, the Trinity, and the human soul. Such 
also were the heretics of the succeeding ages, called Brethren and 
Sisters of the Free Spirit, that is, free from obedience to the flesh, 
from the law of sin and death; the Massalians and Euchites, that is, 



* It will be noticed that in treating this part of our subject, when we express any opinion or 
cake any comment of our own it is in the most moderate language we can consistently use- 
History is a stubborn thing; we allow it to speak for itself in showing the fulfilment of the 
prophecies, and we quote from (all things considered) the most reliable historians of these 
periods. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



219 



people who pray : the Bogomilans, such as call for mercy. In some 
countries the same class of people were called Beghards. Catholic 
writers have tried to enumerate the errors of these heretics, but they 
were considered too numerous ; the fact is their faith and practice 
were contrary to the Catholic establishment in everything. Of 
course it would be endless to enumerate their supposed errors concern- 
ing baptism, the Eucharist, the sanctity of churches, altars, incense, 
consecrated oil, bells, bishops, funeral rites, marriages, indulgences, 
and the wood of the true cross. 

Basilius was a reputed Manichsean and founder of the sect called 
Bogomilans. This aged and venerable man, being treacherously 
induced to unfold his doctrine to the Emperor Alexius, was condem- 
ned as a heretic, and barbarously burnt at Constantinople ; which 
was but the beginning of sorrows to his harmless followers. 

Peter deBruys was another who, in the twelfth century, troubled 
the Catholic peace and supplied the heresy-hunters with fresh labor 
and blood. They say "he attempted to remove the superstitions 
that disfigured the beautiful simplicity of the Gospel." * He would 
baptize only such as were come to a full use of their reason. He 
rejected the notion of the real body and blood of Christ in the Eucha- 
rist, the virtue of the wooden cross, and other instruments of super- 
stition. He was followed by great numbers, and after a laborious 
ministry of twenty years, was burned at St. Giles, in the year 1130, 
by an enraged populace, instigated by the clergy. The next Catho- 
lic disturbance came from Henry, from whom came the Henricians. 
He travelled from place to place, declaiming, it is said, with the 
greatest vehemence and fervor against the vices of the clergy ; at 
length being seized by a certain bishop and condemned before Pope 
Eugenius, he was committed to a close prison in the year 1143, where 
he soon after ended his days, leaving a train of heretics behind him 
in France to supply the ravenous priesthood with blood and carnage. 
In Brabant similar commotions were excited by the illiterate Tan- 
quelmus, " who drew after him a numerous sect." Some of his 
enemies speak the worst things of him : others say these infamous 
charges are " absolutely incredible, that these blasphemies were falsely 
charged upon him by a vindictive priesthood." They say he treated 
with contempt the external worship of God and the sacraments, held 
clandestine meetings, and, like other heretics, inveighed against the 
clergy ; for which " he was assassinated by an ecclesiastic in a cruel 



manner." 



Arnold, a man of extensive learning and remarkable austerity, 

* Eccles. Hist, Cent. XH. 



220 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

excited new troubles in Italy. By his instigations, it is said, the 
people even insulted the persons of the clergy in a disorderly manner. 
He was, however, seized in the year 1155, publicly crucified, and 
afterwards burned to ashes ; leaving behind him a great number of 
disciples to perplex the priesthood about their overgrown opulence, 
Papal revenue, and ungodly authority. Spain had long been teem- 
ing with heresy, even from the time that Mark, the disciple of 
Hierax, went into that kingdom. Sometimes these were called 
Manichseans, sometimes Priscillianists ; and they flourished here 
under the last name during a period of more than eight centuries. 

Robinson says : " This body of people knew no crime of heresy, 
(among themselves :) they supposed very justly that persecution was 
oppression, that killing for the faith was murder. If ecclesiastics 
had never created a virtue called orthodoxy, the world would never 
have heard of a crime called heresy." * Councils never could sup- 
press heresy in Spain ; but the Inquisition did. A great number of 
heretics resided in Spain until they were exterminated by that ini- 
quitous institution. After this the valleys among the Pyrenean 
mountains between France and Spain became the sequestered habi- 
tation of heretics. To these retreats they fled from the destructive 
arm of persecution, and as they were driven from thence they spread 
through France, Germany, and other provinces of Europe, formed 
societies and were called by different names, but were more generally 
called Albigenses and Waldenses. 

The Manichseans, Priscillianists, and all who sprung from the 
same original stock, agreed in one article of faith, and that was bap- 
tism. They all held that the Catholic corporation was not a Church 
cf Christ, and they, therefore re-baptized those that had been baptiz- 
ed in that community before they admitted them into their societies ; 
for this reason their most common name of distinction was Anabap- 
tists. But by whatever names they might be called in different 
countries, all such as renounced the Papal superstition, and placed 
religion in the practice of virtue, were the common objects of perse- 
cution to the Catholic priesthood. 

Mosheim, f in speaking of the Church in the tenth century, says : 
" The clergy were, for the most part, a worthless set of men, equally 
enslaved to sensuality and superstition, and capable of the most 
abominable and flagitious deeds. The pretended chiefs and rulers 
of the universal Church indulged themselves in the commission of 
the most odious crimes, and abandoned themselves to the lawless 
impulse of the most licentious passions without reluctance or remorse, 



* Ecclea. Researches. t Eccles. Hist., Cent. X. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 221 

and whose spiritual Empire was such a diversified scene of iniquity 
and violence as never was exhibited under any of those temporal 
tyrants who have been the scourges of mankind." Robinson, speak- 
ing of the supreme rulers of the Catholic Church, the bishops of 
Rome in particular, says : " Of the sinners it may truly be affirmed 
that they were sinners of size ; for it would be difficult to mention 
a crime which they did not commit.'' * Mosheim says again : " The 
history of the Roman Pontiffs that lived in this (tenth) century, is a 
history of so many monsters, and not of men, and exhibits a horrible 
series of the most flagitious and complicated crimes, as all writers 
unanimously confess." 

This is the description and the character of that spiritual Em- 
pire, that Christian Church, most improperly so called. It is the 
character of that symbolic beast and woman widely-ruling that 
sat upon many waters, ruling the nations, with whom the kings of 
the earth committed fornication, and with whose wine of fornication, 
the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk. She was intoxicated 
with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of 
Jesus. 

Yet, all non-conformists who would not be made drunk with the 
wine of the filthiness of her fornication, must needs be called 
" heretics" the only fit objects of revenge and destruction.! In the 
progress of this power " all places of worship were taken from 
heretics, and they punished for holding conventicles, though they 
held them in forests, and dens and caves of the earth." But in this 
spiritual Empire the ruling party, from the beginning, "declared 
themselves the only Christians, for they believed the Trinity ; and 
all the rest were heretics, bound over to present and eternal perdi- 
tion." " Notwithstanding," says Robinson, "thousands set all 
penalties at defiance, and lived and died as their own understandings 
and conscience commanded them, in the practice of heresy and 
schism." X 

" In the year 1210, these non-conformists had become so numerous 
and so odious that Ugo, or Hugh, the old bishop of Ferrara, obtained 
an edict of the Western Emperor, Otho IV., for the suppression of 
them. Five years after, Pope Innocent III. held a council at the 
Lateran, and denounced anathemas against heretics of all descrip- 
tions, and against the lords and their bailiffs who suffered them to 
reside on their estates." Men of continual employment were now 
in quest of heretics ; bound by an oath to seek for them in towns, 
houses, cellars, woods, caves, and fields, and to purge the provinces 
of the enemies of the Catholic faith. Besides, in every city a council 

• Eccles. Researches. t Eccles. Hist. J Eccles. Researcher 



222 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

of inquisition was instituted, consisting of one priest and three lay- 
men. As early as the year 1233, that infamous court, called the 
Inquisition, had a permanent establishment in Spain and France, 
which, in its progress, intensified to the utmost degree, the crimson 
oolor of the bloody beast, and the infernal rabble by whom it was 
executed. In the kingdom of Castile and Aragon, there were 
eighteen Inquisitorial courts, having each of them its counsellors, 
termed Apostolic Inquisitors, its secretaries, Serjeants, and othei 
officers. And beside these, there were twenty thousand familiars 
dispersed throughout the kingdom who acted as spies and informers, 
and were employed to apprehend all suspected persons, and to com- 
mit them to trial to the prisons which belonged to the Inquisition." 
" By these familiars, persons were seized on bare suspicion, and in 
contradiction to the common rules of law they were subjected to the 
torture, tried and condemned by the Inquisitors, without being con- 
fronted by their accusers, or with the witnesses on whose evidence 
they were condemned." " The punishments were more or less dread- 
ful, according to the caprice and humor of the judges. The unhappy 
victims were either strangled, or committed to the flames, or loaded 
with chains and shut up in dungeons during life. Their effects were 
confiscated, and their families stigmatized with infamy." " Authors 
of undoubted credit affirm, and without the least exaggeration, that 
millions of persons have been ruined by this horrible court. Moors 
were banished a million at a time ; six or eight hundred thousand 
Jews were driven away at once, and their immense riches seized by 
their accusers, and dissipated among their persecutors." * " Heretics 
of all kinds, and of various denominations, were imprisoned and 
burnt, or fled into other countries. " This horrible court," says 
Robinson, " is styled by a monstrous abuse of words : The Holy and 
Apostolic Court of Inquisition." Newton says : " It is enough to 
make the blood run cold to read of the horrid murders and devasta 
tions of this time ; how many of these poor innocent Christians (i.e 
heretics), were sacrificed to the blind fury and malice of their 
enemies ! It is computed by Mede, from good authorities, that in 
France alone were slain a million." t 

In the year 1725, the inquisitors discovered a family of Moors at 
Granada in Spain, peaceably employed in manufacturing silks, and 
possessing superior skill in the exercise of this profession. The 
ancient laws supposed to have fallen into disuse were enforced in all 
their rigor, and the wretched family were burned alive. f 

On the entry of the French into Toledo during the Peninsular 

* Eccles. Researches. t Newton on Prophecy: Diss. XXV. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 223 

war, Gen. Lasalle visited the place of the Inquisition. The great 
number of instruments of torture, especially those for stretching the 
limbs, and the drop-baths which cause a lingering death, excited 
horror even in the minds of soldiers, hardened in the field of battle. 
One of these instruments, singular in its kind for refined torture, and 
disgraceful to humanity and the name of religion, deserves particular 
attention. In a subterraneous vault adjoining the audience chamber 
stood in a recess in the wall a wooden statue made by the hands of 
monks, representing the Virgin Mary. A gilded glory beamed round 
her head, and she held a standard in her right hand. Notwithstand- 
ing the ample folds of the silk garments that fell from her shoulders 
on both sides, it appears that she wore a breastplate, and upon a close 
examination it was found that the whole surface of the body was 
covered with extremely sharp nails, and small daggers or blades 
of knives, with the points projecting outwards. The arms and 
hands had joints and their motions were directed by machinery, 
placed behind the partition. One of the servants of the Inquisition 
was ordered to make the machinery manoeuvre. As the statue 
extended its arms and gradually drew them back, as if she would 
affectionately embrace and press some one to her heart, the well-filled 
knapsack of a Polish grenadier supplied for this time the place of 
the poor victim. The statue pressed it closer and closer ; and when 
the director of the machinery made it open its arms and return to its 
first position, the knapsack was found pierced two or three inches 
deep, and remained hanging on the nails and daggers of the murder- 
ous instrument. 

This infamous tribunal of the Inquisition is said, between the 
years 1481 and 1759, to have caused 34,658 human beings to be 
burned alive ; and between 1481 and 1808 to have sentenced 288,214 
to * the galleys or to perpetual imprisonment. In the Auto of Toledo 
in February 1501, sixty-seven women were delivered over to the 
flames for Jewish practices. This tribunal was exceedingly severe 
in its action against the Jews, who suffered in great numbers, and, 
as the heretics, they were condemned for very slight offences. A 
priest, who did not put up for being a zealot, wrote thus of the Jews : 
" This accursed race were either unwilling to bring their children to 
be baptized, or if they did they washed away the stain on returning 
home. They dressed their stews and other dishes with oil instead of 
lard; abstained from pork; kept the Passover; ate meat in Lent; 
and sent oil to replenish the lamps of their synagogues, with many 
other abominable ceremonies of their religion. They entertained no 



* Histoire Abregee de l'lnquisition. 



224 creator a:h) cosmos ; OR, cosmotheologies, etc. 

respect for monastic life ; and frequently profaned the sanctity of 
religious houses by the violation or seduction of their inmates. They 
were an exceedingly politic and ambitious people, engrossing the 
most lucrative municipal offices, and prepared to gain their livelihood 
by traffic, in which they made exorbitant gains, rather than by man- 
ual labor or mechanical arts. They considered themselves in the 
hands of the Egyptians, whom it was a merit to deceive and pilfer. 
By their wicked contrivances they amassed great wealth, and thus 
were often able to ally themselves by marriage with noble Christian 
families." The Inquisition entertained accusations against high and 
low, both Jews and Christians, upon pretexts the most frivolous as 
well as grave ; and condemned by punishments, varying from death 
by fire to simple penance, delinquents who could not say they believed 
what to their mind was a lie. It accepted evidence, which even in 
its own day would not have been admitted in a civil court of law ; 
and the pretexts upon which condemnation frequently proceeded 
were such as to make them marvellous even in a barbaric age. Tor- 
tures of the most exquisite and excruciating kind were practised on 
the accused to make them confess or to induce them to accuse others ; 
and the hateful system of espionage and secret prison-houses were 
adopted by the Inquisition at every place where its courts were estab- 
lished. The evidence on which Jews were condemned would be 
simply ludicrous had it not been so terrible in its effects. An author 
of high standing remarks on this subject : " It was considered good 
evidence of the fact, i. e., Judaism, if the prisoner wore better clothes, 
or cleaner linen on the Jewish Sabbath than on the other days of the 
week; if he had no fire in his house the preceding evening; if he 
sat at table with Jews, or ate the flesh of certain animals, or drank a 
certain beverage held much in estimation by them ; if he washed a 
corpse in warm water, or when one was dying turned one's face to 
the wall ; or, finally, if he gave Hebrew names to his children, a pro- 
vision most whimsically cruel, since, by a law of Henry II., he was 
prevented, under severe penalties, from giving them Christian names." 
Such testimony being accepted, the number of the condemned must, of 
course, be legion : and in the interval between the beginning of Jan- 
uary and the beginning of November, 1451, the first year in which 
the Inquisition was put into terribly active force, in Spain, there had 
perished by fire in Seville no less than 298 persons. Notwithstanding 
the plague which in this year visited Seville, sweeping off 15,000 of 
the inhabitants, the Inquisition still continued its fiendish work ; so 
that by the end of the year, or up to the ensuing first of January, 
2000 persons, many of them the most learned and respectable of the 
day, had perished at the stake in the province of Andalusia. Twice 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 



225 



that number having managed to escape, were burned in effigy, and 
17,000 were condemned to lesser punishments ; of which the least 
must have been a terrible infliction. Some few years after this, when 
one Deza came into power as Inquisitor-General in Spain, in the first 
8 years he presided at Seville, he caused 2,592 persons to be burned 
alive, to say nothing about 35,000 condemned to various other pun- 
ishments, short of death, but illustrating that the tender mercies of 
the wicked are cruel. When the Reformation began to be proclaimed, 
the work of the inquisitors increased, and several hundreds of persons 
were annually burned alive in various parts of Spain, as the conse- 
quence. But not only in Spain did the Inquisition carry on its 
work so devilishly : in her colonies, especially in South America and 
Mexico, the cruel office was set up, and the Indians who escaped the 
cruelties of the colonists as civil governors, experienced the rigorous 
punishment of them as religionists, and destroyed themselves in large 
numbers rather than fall into their hands. It is wonderful that there 
was no actual rebellion against the Inquisition in Spain, which con- 
tinued for three centuries doing its terrible work of human destruc- 
tion. Yet there was no upraising against it. Men hated but feared 
a tribunal, whose spies were all around, even in the bosom of the 
family, and which dealt its blows so secretly and suddenly, and with 
such awful effects. Nine hundred families were burned alive in the 
Duchy of Lorraine, in' France, for being witches, by one inquisitor. 
Under this accusation it is said that upward of 30,000 women have 
perished by the hands of the inquisitors.* 

Torquemada, that infernal arch-inquisitor of Spain, brought into 
the Inquisition, in the space of fourteen years, no less than 80,000 
persons, of whom 6,000 were condemned to the flames and burned 
alive with the greatest pomp and exultation; and of that vast 
number there was not, perhaps, a single person who was not more 
pure in religion and morals than their fiendish persecutors, t 

Does the Deity, then, whom the Inquisition professes to serve, 
take such intense delight in the sufferings of human beings ? Has 
that Being, whose sun cheers the habitations of the wicked as well 
as the good, commanded such blood-thirsty monsters to act as his 
ministers of vengeance, to torment and destroy his rational creatures? 
Does the doctrine of 'the gospel, which they profess to believe, 
inculcate such practices? The very thought is absurd and blasphe- 
mous. If they would do as God requires of them, to do good and be 
good, live godly lives, no such institution as the Inquisition would 
ever exist, nor any other evil Avork. But it is men themselves, of 



* Inquisition Unmasked. | Kaime's Sketches. 

15 



226 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

their own free will who inflict these sufferings upon their fellows. 
Man is the author, the agent, as he is the object of the cruelty. But 
some, perhaps, will suppose that the devil hardens man's heart, and 
prompts him to the perpetration of such infamous crimes as that of roast- 
ing his fellow-men over a slow fire. Well, that is a very true supposi- 
tion in a certain sense. But really who or what is the devil? Why, he 
is the man himself, who acts according to his own will, and practices 
such unspeakable wickedness. Yes, my readers, man himself is that 
evil being, by what ever name he may be called ; of which fact you 
have partial evidence in the foregoing statements. Can anything 
be conceived of, as more intensely evil than a human being who will 
seize and subject his fellow-human beings to such unspeakable tor- 
tures as those peculiar to the Inquisition, and then roast them to 
death over slow fires, as we see these men to have done ? The fore- 
going statements are of facts which we may believe to have occurred, 
just as if we were eye-witnesses of every one of them. The blood of 
these tens of thousands who have been so cruelly and mercilessly 
sacrificed, cries unto us from the ground, to tamper no longer with 
hypocrisy and deceit, to lay aside that old theory of a devil, or any 
Being leading men to do evil, against their will and alleged as an 
excuse for their evil acts, and to make men stand on their own bases, 
and account them responsible for their conduct and acts. In a pre- 
ceding part of this book we have shown that not only the globe on 
which we live is a concentration of spirit, but that man also is a 
spirit, and, behold, here we perceive in him the spirit of evil developed, 
we may say, to almost an infinite extent. The existence of cruelty 
in men evidences that the perpetrators of it are ignorant of the true 
God. They have no true knowledge of him, for if they had they 
would not be cruel. God is manifested in a human being patiently 
enduring for the truth, and for righteousness' sake amid all opposition 
from adverse influences, visible and invisible. And the devil is 
manifested in him who inflicts suffering undeservedly or wantonly 
upon the true and righteous man, or upon any human being. In short 
words God is manifested in the life and conversation of the truly 
good and righteous man ; and the devil is manifested in the life and 
conversation of the evil and actively wicked man. And thus we 
have found a proper application for the term God, which means he 
that is good ; and also of the term devil, which means he that is evil ; 
and hence it is seen that the term Deity includes both of these, and 
infinitely more in its fullest extent, and as we have used it in the 
beginning of this book. In the New Testament the apostle John, in 
his 1st Epistle, says that " God is love ; " and in the same Epistle, as 
well as in his 2d, that " love is the keeping of the commandments ; " 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 227 

and in another place of the New Testament it is said that " love is 
the fulfilling of the law ; " therefore it is quite evident that God is 
manifested in the human being that keeps the commandments, or 
fulfills the law, which means the same thing ; that is, in the man 
who truly is and does good, lives a life of godliness. But in the 
case before us, as we have said, man is the sufferer, and man inflicts 
the suffering. Man is the author and agent as well as the object of 
the suffering. When a man commits an offence against the laws of 
his country, the law looks to the man himself for satisfaction for it. 
It looks not after a supposed or an imaginary being, of whatever 
name; it looks after the real being, the direct perpetrator of the 
crime. The individual has committed an offence against mankind, 
and the latter looks to the individual himself for atonement for it. 
He would not be listened to, if, when brought before the Judge, he 
sought to justify himself by leaving the blame of his crime upon an 
imaginary being. Even so there is no necessity any longer of men 
blaming any other being than themselves for the evil they commit. 
The life of godliness implies a denial of pride and self; and here we 
repeat the true God is manifested in the character and conduct of 
the man who, in his daily walk and conversation, during his life 
long, evinces self-denial, long-suffering, humility, gentleness, meekness, 
truth and righteousness, who, in short, cultivates and displays all 
the true Christian graces, subjectively and objectively. Men can be 
good if they will. They can also be evil if they will. Will men 
not henceforth universally choose to be good ? How amiable the 
character of the man or woman who displays the spirit of charity 
and benevolence to all around, and to all mankind! And many, 
many such we have in the world in our time. But how unlovely 
the character of one who displays the spirit of hatred and malignity 
to one's fellow-human beings to the extent we have seen it displayed 
in the case of the inquisitors, or to a far less extent ! The Deity is 
everywhere present, and though unseen, his character, as indicated 
by the beneficent operations of nature around us, and by the testimony 
of good men of the past, condemns the hellish practices of the infa- 
mous agents of that superstition, whose character we have been 
reviewing. 

The horrid practice of dragooning, which was used by the Romish 
church for converting supposed heretics, was another melancholy 
example of religious cruelties and fanaticism. In the reigD o( Louis 
XIV. of France, his troops, soldiers, and dragoons, entered into the 
houses of the Protestants, where they marred and defaced their fur- 
niture, broke their looking-glasses, let their wines run about their 
cellars, threw about and trampled under foot their stock o( provis- 



228 CEEATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTFS, ETC. 

ions, turned their dining-rooms into stables for their horses, and 
treated the proprietors with the severest contumely and cruelty. 
They bound to posts mothers that gave suck, and allowed their 
sucking infants to lie languishing in their sight for several days and 
nights, crying and gasping for life. Some they bound before a great 
fire, and after they were half roasted let them go. Some they hung 
np by the hair and some by the feet in chimneys ; smoked them with 
wisps of hay until they were suffocated. Women and maids were hung 
up by their feet and by their armpits, and exposed stark naked to pub- 
lic view. Some they cut and slashed with knives, and, after stripping 
them naked, stuck their bodies with pins and needles from head to 
foot, and with red hot pincers took hold of them by the nose and 
other parts of the body, and dragged them about the room until they 
made them promise to be Catholics, or until the cries of the wretched 
victims, calling upon God for help, induced them to let them go. If 
an} T endeavored to escape from those cruelties they pursued them 
into the fields and woods, where they shot at them as if they were 
wild beasts ; and they prohibited them from leaving the kingdom on 
pain of the galleys, the lash, and perpetual imprisonment. On such 
scenes of desolation and horror the Romish clergy feasted their eyes, 
and made them a matter only of laughter and sport.* What fiendish 
crimes for those calling themselves civilized to perpetrate ! Could 
an American savage or a New Zealander have devised more barbarous 
and exquisite cruelties ! 

In the Island of Great Britain the flames of persecution have 
sometimes raged with unrelenting fury. During the last two or three 
years of the short reign of Queen Mary, it is computed that 277 per- 
sons were committed to the flames, besides those who were punished 
by fines, confiscations, imprisonments, or otherwise. Among those 
who suffered by fire there were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, 
eight lay-gentlemen, and eighty-four tradesmen : one hundred hus- 
bandmen, fifty-nine women, and four children. Hunter, a young 
man of about nineteen years of age, was one of the unhappy victims 
of the Zeal of Queen Mary for Popery. Having been inadvertently 
betrayed by a priest to deny the doctrine of transubstantiation, he 
absconded to keep out of harm's way. Bonner, that notorious popish 
executioner, threatened ruin to the father if he did not deliver up the 
son. Young Hunter, hearing of his father's imminent peril, presented 
himself, and was burned to death instead of being rewarded for his 
filial piety. A woman of the island of Guernsey was brought to the 
flames without regard to her advanced pregnancy, and she was de- 



* Enc. Brit. Art. "Dragooning. 



PAPAL SUPKEMACY. 229 

livered of a child in the midst of the flames. One of the guards 
snatched the infant from the flames to save it, but the magistrate 
who superintended the execution ordered it to be thrown back, being 
resolved, he said, that nothing should survive which sprung from 
a parent so obstinately heretical.* 

"Against the Waldenses," says Thuanus, a Popish historian, 
" when exquisite punishments availed little, and the evil was exas- 
perated by the remedy which had been unseasonably applied, and 
their number increased daily, at length complete armies were raised ; 
and a war of no less weight than what our people had before waged 
against the Saracens, was decreed against them ; the event of which 
was that they were rather slain, put to flight, spoiled everywhere of 
their goods and dignities and dispersed here and there, than that, 
convinced of their error, they repented." The Waldenses and Albi- 
genses being persecuted in their own country, fled into other coun- 
tries. In Germany, they grew and multiplied so fast, notwith- 
standing the rage and fury of crusaders and inquisitors, that at the 
beginning of the (fourteenth) century, it is computed that there 
were eighty thousand of them in Bohemia, Austria and the neigh- 
boring territories." Yet comparatively but few escaped the rage 
and fury of the bloody inquisitors. 

It is, therefore, a just remark of Newton that : M If Rome Pagan 
hath slain her thousands of innocent Christians, Rome Christian 
(rather anti-Christian) hath slain her ten thousands. For not to 
mention other outrageous slaughters and barbarities, the crusades 
against the Waldenses and Albigenses, the murders committed by 
the duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the massacres in France and 
Ireland will probably amount to ten times the number of the Chris- 
tians slain in all the ten persecutions of the Roman Emperors put 
together." f But is it not astonishing beyond measure that any one 
should yet be so blind and so silly as to imagine that the pure Gospel 
of Christ could have been conveyed by such means ? " That kind of 
religion," says Robinson, " which the Catholic always propagated 
ought to be considered as it really is, not merely a religion but a 
species of government, including in it a set of tyrannical maxims 
injurious to the lives, liberties, and properties of citizens in a free 
state, and all tending to render the state dependent on a faction 
called the Church, governed from age to age by a succession of 
priests.":): And such, we may remark, was that kind of priesthood 
by which the Catholic or Orthodox Church was organized and 
ruled from the beginning, according to their degree of power and 
influence. Simon the Sorcerer § bewitched the people, giving out 

* Eccles. Researches. t Newton on Prophecy : Diss. XX\ | Eccles. Researches 

§ Acts, ch. VIII. 



230 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

that himself was some great one ; when therefore, under his lucrative 
motives, he professed to be a Christian, he was Antichrist in the seed. 
Diotrephes * was a Catholic priest, Antichrist in the blade ; he 
loved to have the pre-eminence ; he could not really persecute, but 
he prated with malicious words against the heretics, John and his 
brethren, and cast them out of the Church. Councils are but a 
larger growth from the same diabolical root ; they are rulers without 
dominion. Inquisitors without an Inquisition, and may be justly 
called Antichrist in the ear. Synods of three or four bishops framing 
creeds or canons for conscience, and attaching to a breach of them 
ideas of guilt, differ from the Inquisition only as a spark of fire differs 
from a city in a blaze." f Thus from prating they proceed tosolemn 
anathemas, which happily cannot yet effect the ruin of the dissenter 
Great ones, however, go on to great words, and as their numbers and 
authority increase they grasp the effectual power by faith, and form 
an Inquisition in their dire decrees. Their language used to be 
when they could proceed no farther : " If any person, king, noble- 
man, prelate, priest, monk, or any of inferior rank, native or foreigner, 
shall at any time deny this creed or disobey these canons, may he be 
numbered with Judas, Dathan, and Abiram : may all his limbs be 
broken ; may his eyes be plucked out ; may his entrails be torn out 
of him ; may he be smitten with the leprosy and other diseases from 
the crown of the head to the sole of the foot ; and may he suffer the 
pain of eternal damnation with the devil and his angels." When 
the inquisitors burnt their thirty, sixty, ninety heretics at a time ; 
stained the walls of their torture room with human blood ; while 
they clothed the wretched sufferers with habits and caps on which 
were represented devils and flames, — what did they more than finish 
and color a picture of which the most ancient and sanctimonious 
Catholic synods had given them a sketch ? — a picture, when finished, 
so dreadful that even the artists shuddered at the sight of their own 
work ! An Inquisitor calls it : Horrendum et tremendum Spectaao- 
lum ! A horrid and dreadful spectacle ! " But liberal men," says 
Robinson, "have hardly words to express their abhorrence of it." 

Near the beginning of the eleventh century, Boleslaus, king of 
Poland, entered into a bloody war with the Prussians, and " obtained 
by the force of penal laws and of a victorious army what Adalbert, 
bishop of Prague, could not effect by exhortation and argument. 
He dragooned this savage people into the Church." J 

" Waldemar I., King of Denmark, unsheathed his sword in the 
twelfth century for the propagation and advancement of Christianity ; 



• HI. John, verses 9-10. t Eccles. Researches. \ Eccles. Hist, Century XL 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 231 

and wherever his arms were successful, there he pulled down the tem- 
ples and images of the gods, destroyed their altars, laid waste their 
sacred groves, and substituted in their place the Christian worship, 
which deserved to be propagated by better means than the sword." * 
These are the words of Mosheim, and he might with more propriety 
have said that their bloody religion deserved to be called by some other 
name than that of Christianity. But he continues his narrative in 
the same Catholic strain : " The island of Rugen submitted to the 
victorious arms of Waldemar in A. D. 1168, and its fierce and savasre 
inhabitants, who were in reality no more than a band of robbers and 
pirates, were obliged, by that prince, to hear the instructions of the 
pious and learned doctors that followed his army, and to receive the 
Christian worship." 

" The Finlanders received the Gospel in the same manner ; they 
were also a fierce and savage people. After many bloody battles 
they were totally defeated by Eric IX., and were commanded to 
embrace the religion of the conqueror, which the greatest part of 
them did, though with the utmost reluctance. The founder and 
ruler of this new Church ( of savage robbers and pirates) was Henri, 
Archbishop of Upsal, who accompanied the victorious monarch in 
that bloody campaign." But Henry, for his severe treatment of his 
new converts, was by them assassinated; and thus procured the 
honors of saintship and martyrdom from Pope Adrian IV. Can the 
heathen mythology furnish greater monsters than Dr. Mosheim 's 
bloody Christianity ; his pious, learned, tyrannical doctors ; his 
fierce, and savage Christians ; and his lordly archbishops, saints and 
martyrs ? But let us pursue the track of these Catholic missionaries 
a little farther, and see what Gospel, or good news, they spread 
among the Livonians. Mosheim in his usual style says : " The pro- 
pagation of the Gospel among the Livonians was attended with much 
difficulty and also with horrible scenes of cruelty and bloodshed." 
" Mainerd, a regular canon of St. Augustin (having attempted the 
conversion of that savage people without success), addressed himself 
to the Roman Pontiff, Urbain III., who consecrated him bishop to 
the Livonians, and at the same time declared a holy war against this 
obstinate people." 

" This war, which was at first carried on against the inhabitants 
of the province of Esthonia, was continued with still greater vigor 
and rendered more universal by Berthold, abbot of Lucca, who left 
his monastery to share the labors and laurels of Mainerd, whom he 
accordingly succeeded in the see of Livonia. The new bishop marched 

• Eccles. Hist, Century XII. 



232 CREATOR AM COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

into that province at the head of a powerful army which he had raised 
in Saxony, preached the Gospel sword in hand, and proved its truth 
by blows instead of arguments." * Beyond all dispute he proved, by 
his unmerciful blows, that his religion and his Gospel were a brutal 
imposition upon the reason and rights of men. " Albert, canon of 
Bremen, became the third bishop of Livonia, and followed with a 
barbarous enthusiasm the same military methods of conversion. 
He entered Livonia in the year 1198, with a fresh body of troops 
drawn out of Saxony ; and encamping at Riga, instituted there, at 
the direction of the Roman Pontiff, Innocent III., the military order 
of the knights sword-bearers, who were commissioned to dragoon 
the Livonians into the profession of Christianity, and to oblige them 
by force of arms to receive the benefits of baptism." 

New legions were sent from Germany to second the efforts and 
add to the efficacy of the mission of these booted apostles ; and they, 
together with the knights sword-bearers, so cruelly oppressed, slaugh- 
tered and tormented this wretched people that, exhausted at length 
and unable to stand any longer firm against the arm of persecution, 
they abandoned the statues of the heathen deities, and substituted in 
their place the images of the saints. Mosheim at length closes his 
account of the wonderful progress of the Catholic Gospel among the 
Livonians in his usual murky manner. 

" But while they received the blessings of the Gospel, they were 
at the same time deprived of all earthly comforts ; for their lands 
and possessions were taken from them with the most odious circum- 
stances of cruelty and violence, and the knights and bishops divided 
the spoil." Such curses of Anti-Christ's kingdom, retailed out by 
Orthodox doctors and divines, have driven many men of honest prin- 
ciples to discard the name of Christianity altogether ; and justly 
they might discard a religion that claimed even a distant relation to 
such a bloody, oppressive, and persecuting hierarchy. But the vo- 
taries of such a religion had no relation to the followers of Christ. 
The true and genuine Gospel of Christ never was preached with sword 
in hand, but with the power and energy of the Holy Spirit, which is a 
spirit of peace, long-suffering, meekness and mercy. And when the 
Gospel was preached by the true ambassadors of Christ, every human 
being to whom it came had full liberty of choice ; and if they em- 
braced the truth it was upon their own inward conviction and their 
estimation of its value, without any compulsion from any other 
quarter. Neither did the promulgators of true Christianity ever en- 
act laws to bind those that did not believe ; nor did they ever pros 

* Eccles. Hist., Century XH. 



PAPAL SUPKEMACY. 233 

ecute or practise war or bloodshed to promote their cause, or increase 
their number ; nor compel any one to receive their testimony by any 
force, violence, or cruelty whatever. This is the truth and cannot 
be denied. But what shall be said when such booted apostles and 
lordly bishops with their sword-bearers, drunk with ambition and 
lust for dominion, are pushing on in every direction to extend the 
limits of their lawless empire, and spreading calamity and distress 
wherever they go ? 

Can any real friend of God or man, look on with indifference or 
try to amuse a distressed world with flowery tales about a divine 
Gospel, a benign religion, and a celestial light ? Or, must not reason 
and conscience speak out and testify that all such evangelizing is 
the cursed deception of anti-Christian tyrants ? Such awful scenes 
of merciless tyranny under the mask of a Christian profession are the 
most noted achievements of Catholic Emperors, Popes, bishops, and 
monks during the long reign of Anti-Christ. Many volumes would 
not contain a full account of all the arts of deception, the pious 
frauds, the bloody wars, and horrid massacres, the secret wickednesses 
and open crimes which have been practised in this kingdom under 
the sacred names of God and Christ, and under a cloak of pious mo- 
tives and holy ends. But happily such monsters of iniquity are to be 
clearly known by their fruits, their own historians being witnesses. 
To say no more their holy wars with the infidel Saracens, as they 
called them may be sufficient to demonstrate that it was rather a 
worldly view of Christ's religion they had than that he has set 
forth in the Gospels. 

As seen above , by the influence of the pope and the ecclesiastical and 
civil powers a vast army was raised in the eleventh century to wrest 
Palestine from the Mohometans. 800,000 men, each with a conse- 
crated cross appearing upon his right shoulder, set out for Constanti- 
nople in 1096 A. D. It was, doubtless, the van of that army, or the 
part thereof which marched under Peter the Hermit which Mosheim 
describes as follows : This army was a motley assemblage of monks, 
prostitutes, artists, laborers, lazy tradesmen, merchants, boys, girls, 
slaves, malefactors, and profligate debauchees, who were animated 
solely by the prospect of spoil and plunder and hoped to make their 
fortunes by this holy campaign."* Dr. Maclaine, the translator of 
Mosheim, states from the best authoritv that " the first division of 
this prodigious army committed the most abominable enormities in 
the countries through which they passed, and that there was no 



• Eccles. Hist, Century XL 



234 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

kind of insolence, injustice, impurity, barbarity and violence of which 
they were not guilty." 

" Nothing perhaps in the annals of history can equal the flagitious 
deeds of this infernal rabble." " We pass in silence," says Mosheim, 
" the various enormities that were occasioned by these crusades, the 
murders, rapes and robberies of the most infernal nature that were 
everywhere committed with impunity by those holy soldiers of God 
and of Christ, as they were impiously called." And in this manner 
did the beast wax exceeding great ; so that at the sight of his army 
and horsemen, which were like the sand upon the sea shore for mul- 
titude, it might justly have been said : Who is able to make war 
with him ? 

The habitable and most populous parts of the globe were the 
scenes of his ravaging power ; and all whose habitation was upon 
the earth, or who contended for its honors, pleasures and prefer- 
ments were obliged to worship him, whose iniquitous names and 
characters never were written in the Book of the innocent Life of 
the Lamb. 

They worshiped the Bishop of Rome, not only by enriching 
him with their substance, but by conferring upon him such names 
and titles as Our Lord God the Pope, Another God upon earth, 
King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the same is the Dominion 
of God and the Pope, Lord of the Universe, Arbiter of the Fate of 
Kingdoms and Empires, and Supreme ruler over the Kings and 
Princes of the earth.* Agreeable to those blasphemous titles his 
votaries maintain that " the power of the Pope is greater than all 
created power, and extends itself to things celestial, terrestrial and 
infernal ; " f " that he is not only bishop of Rome, but of the whole 
world, and is constituted judge in the place of God which he fills as 
the vicegerent of the Most High, J that he doeth whatsoever he 
listeth, even things unlawful, and is more than God. He as God, sit- 
teth in the temple of God showing himself that he is God. And he 
sitteth there as God, especially at his inauguration, when he 
sitteth upon the high altar in St. Peter's Church, and maketh the 
table of the Lord his footstool, and in that position receiveth 
adoration. Such blasphemies are not only allowed but are even 
encouraged and rewarded in the writers of the Church of 
Rome : and they are not only the extravagance of private writers 
but are the language even of public decretals and acts of the coun- 

• See Eccles. Hist, Centuries XL, XII., Xffl., XIV., XV., XVL 

t His. Redemption, p. 432. Note K. 

t Dissertation on Prophecy, Vol. 2, p. 71, 72. Diss. XXIL 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 235 

cils." So says bishop Newton. Thus was the bishop of Rome not 
only unauthorizedly and unjustifiedly worshiped, but he magnified 
himself against all authorities, saying that neither kings nor bishops, 
civil governors nor ecclesiastical rulers have any lawful power in 
church or state but what they derive from him ; that both the king- 
dom and the souls of kings were under his dominion ; and that he 
had power to bind them in heaven and upon earth. 

Such was the remarkable combination of arrogance, assumptions, 
and wickednesses ineffable, which we see to have centered in the 
supreme head of this ecclesiastico-political empire, as the world 
had not before beheld. And this power was granted by all sorts 
and orders of ignorant, darkmmdecl people, who thus for them- 
selves established the dignity and supreme greatness of fallen man 
both in a spiritual and temporal view ; from all which the greater 
or designing ones expected to derive some profit; in all which they 
expected to have a share. It is no wonder, therefore, that the 
spirit of prophecy, the Holy Spirit of God, should have selected 
such an impressive symbol to portray that hypocritical and inef- 
fably wicked system as the beast, and the bold, bawd woman seated 
thereon. 

Rise and dominion of the Papacy, etc. 

As to the time when this power began conspicuously to appear, 
there has been much research among the learned. It is seen from 
the prophecy in Daniel VII., 8, that the little horn sprung up at first 
insensibly, and then gradually among the ten horns, until finally 
three of these gave it place by their being plucked up by the roots 
before it. These three horns were not only overcome by the little 
horn, but they were eradicated. The conquests of the religion of 
Rome will not satisfy to explain for the eradicating of these horns ; 
it applies to conquests of the secular power and radical and perma- 
nent conquests at that. Now we know that the ecclesiastical pre- 
eminence of the bishop of Rome began, even within the times of the 
primitive Church, to appear above all the other bishops of the Catho- 
lic Church. This prestige remained to the Roman pontiff with a 
gradual increase from the time of Constantine to that of Charle- 
magne ; though during a great part of that interval of 450 years, the 
city of Rome was trampled under foot, and Italy and the West deso- 
lated by contending armies. The first quarter of the seventh cen- 
tury may be taken as the time from which to date the temporal 
power of the bishop of Rome. True, the sovereignty was not con- 
ceded to him until the latter part of the eighth century by the secu- 



* Eccles. Hist, Centuries XI.-XVI 



236 CREATOR AKD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

lar power ; but the circumstances of the times had made him in ef- 
fect the temporal sovereign of Rome ; and from and after the time of 
Pope Gregory the Great, may be dated the temporal sovereignty of 
the Roman bishop. This Gregory was one of the most renowned of 
the Popes of Rome, and he is, perhaps, notwithstanding some differ- 
ence of opinion among the learned concerning it, the last one of 
their own order to whom they have given the title of saint. His 
character, uniting in itself a singular mixture of simplicity, super- 
stition, and cruelty, seems to have suited him for his station and for 
the temper of the times. As soon as he had received the degree of 
deacon, he was sent to reside at the Court of Constantinople as the 
nuncio or minister of the Apostolic See, and he boldly assumed, in 
the name of St. Peter, a tone of independent dignity which would 
have been criminal and dangerous in the most illustrious lay subject 
of the Empire. He returned to Rome with a large increase of repu- 
tation, and after for a short time practising the virtues of a monk, 
he was dragged from the cloister to the Papal throne by the unani- 
mous consent of the clergy and the people. He alone resisted or 
pretended to resist his own elevation ; and his humble petition to 
the Emperor Maurice (lie who, with his family, was killed by Phocas,) 
that he would be pleased to reject the choice of the Romans, served 
only to exalt his character in the eyes of the Emperor and the public. 
When the mandate was proclaimed, Gregory solicited the aid of some 
merchants to convey him in a basket beyond the gates of Rome, and 
modestly concealed himself some clays among the woods and moun- 
tains till his retreat was discovered, as it is said, by a celestial light. 
In his rival the patriarch of Constantinople he condemned the anti- 
Christian title of universal bishop, which the successor of St. Peter 
was too haughty to concede, and too feeble to assume ; and Gregory's 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction was confined to the triple character of 
Bishop of Rome, Primate of Italy, and Apostle of the West ; and the 
bishops of Italy and the adjacent islands acknowledge the bishop of 
Rome as their special Metropolitan. But Gregory made successful 
missionary inroads into Spain, Gaul and Britain ; and it has been said 
that the conquest of the last-named country reflects less honor on 
Csesar than on Gregory the Great. Instead of six legions he de- 
spatched forty monks with Augustin at their head for that distant 
island, and affected to lament the austere duties which prevented him 
from taking part in their spiritual warfare. In less than two years, 
he could announce to the Patriarch of Alexandria that his missionaries 
had baptised the king of Kent, with ten thousand of his Anglo-Saxon 
subjects, and that, like the missionaries of the primitive Church, they 
were armed only with spiritual and supernatural powers. But how 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 237 

ever this may be, it seems certain, that this orthodox conquest was 
not obtained without blood ; for Robinson, in his Ecclesiastical Re- 
searches, asserts that he and his missionary monk Augustin. were the 
cause of over two thousand Anglo-Saxons having been slaughtered. 
The heathen temples of Britain, the Pope permitted to be turned 
into Christian Churches, and the new converts were permitted to 
sacrifice in honor of the saints and martyrs, instead of their an- 
cient deities, on the days that had been observed in honor of the 
latter. 

The course which Gregory pursued towards the Emperor Phocas, 
after his usurpation and murder of the Emperor Maurice and his 
family in such a diabolical manner, may tend to justify the belief that 
Gregory was capable of such atrocities. Phocas, after his murderous 
proceedings, was peaceably acknowledged in the provinces of the 
East and West. His image, with that of his wife Leontina, was ex- 
posed in the Vatican at Rome to the veneration of the people and 
clergy, and afterwards deposited in the palace of the Caesars between 
those of Constantine and Theodosius. As a subject and a Christian 
it might ha /e been the duty of Gregory to acquiesce in the estab- 
lished government until a better could be, or was substituted ; but 
the joyful applause with which, in his epistle to the new Emperor, 
he salutes the fortune of the assassin, has sullied with an indelible 
disgrace, the character of the saint. The successor of St. Peter might 
have inculcated with a respectable firmness the blood-guiltiness 
of the Emperor, and the necessity of his repentance ; he contents 
himself with celebrating the deliverance of the people, and the fall 
of the oppressor ; he rejoices that the pious and benignant Phocas 
had been raised to the imperial throne ; he prays that his hands may 
b<§ strengthened against all his enemies ; and he expresses a fervent 
wish, which perhaps he intended for a prophecy, that after a long and 
triumphant reign he might be transported from a temporal to an 
eternal kingdom. We have already shown the proceedings of Pho- 
cas with respect to Maurice which seemed so pleasing, in Gregory's 
opinion, both to heaven and earth ; and, according to the most im- 
partial historians, Phocas does not appear less hateful in the exercise 
than in the acquisition of power. They delineate his portrait as that 
of a ferocious monster. 

His credulity or prudence always disposed Gregory to con linn 
the truths of his religion by the evidence of ghosts, miracles, and 
resurrections ; and the Catholic Church of succeeding ages has 
freely paid to his saintship the same tribute for virtue as he freely 
granted to the virtue of the saints of his own and the preceding gen- 



238 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOCTES, ETC. 

erations. The historian Gibbon, in speaking of the Popes, especially 
of Gregory the Great, says : " Their temporal power insensibly arose 
from the calamities of the times ; and the Roman bishops who have 
deluged Europe and Asia with blood were compelled to reign as the 
ministers of charity and peace. The Church of Rome was endowed 
with ample revenues in Italy, Sicily, and the most distant provinces ; 
and her agents, who were commonly sub-deacons, had acquired 
a civil and even criminal jurisdiction over their tenants and husband- 
men. The successor of St. Peter administered his patrimony with 
the temper of a vigilant and moderate landlord ; and the epistles of 
Gregory are filled with salutary instructions to abstain from doubt- 
ful or vexatious lawsuits, to preserve the integrity of weights and 
measures, to grant every seasonable delay, and to reduce the capi- 
tation of the slaves of the glebe, who purchased the right of marriage 
by the payment of an ordinary fine. The rent of the produce of 
those estates was transported to the mouth of the Tiber at the risk 
and expense of the Pope : in the use of wealth, he acted like a faith- 
ful steward of the church and the poor, and liberally supplied to 
their wants the inexhaustible resources of abstinence and order. The 
voluminous accounts of his receipts and disbursements was kept 
above three hundred years in the Lateran as the model of Christian 
economy. On the four great festivals he divided their quarterly al- 
lowance to the clergy, to his domestics, to the monasteries, the 
churches, the places of burial, the almshouses, the hospitals of 
Rome, and the rest of the diocese. On the first day of every month 
he distributed to the poor, according to the season, their stated por- 
tion of corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, oil, fish, fresh provisions, 
clothes and money ; and his treasurers were continually summoned 
to satisfy, in his name, the extraordinary demands of indigence and 
merit. The instant distress of the sick and helpless, of strangers and 
pilgrims, was relieved by the bounty of each day and of every hour ; 
nor would the pontiff indulge himself in a frugal repast till he had 
sent the dishes from his own table to some objects deserving of his 
compassion. The misery of the times had reduced the nobles and 
matrons of Rome to accept, without a blush, the benevolence of the 
church : three thousand virgins received their food and raiment from 
the hand of their benefactor ; and many bishops of Italy escaped 
from the barbarians to the hospitable threshold of the Vatican. 
Gregory might justly be styled the Father of his country ; and such 
was the extreme sensibility of his conscience, that for the death of a 
beggar who had perished in the streets, he interdicted himself for 
several days from the exercise of sacerdotal functions. 

The misfortunes of Rome involved the apostolic pastor in the 



papal supremacy. 239 

business of peace and war; and it might be doubtful to himself 
whether piety or ambition prompted him to supply the place of his 
absent sovereign. Gregory awakened the Emperor from a long slum- 
ber ; exposed the guilt or incapacity of the Exarch, and his inferior 
ministers, and complained that the veterans were withdrawn from 
Rome for the defence of Spoleto ; encouraged the Italians to guard 
their cities and altars ; and condescended in the crisis of danger, to 
name the tribunes, and to direct the operations of the provincial 
troops. But the martial spirit of the Pope was checked by the scru- 
ples of humanity and religion ; the imposition of tribute, though it 
was employed in the Italian war, he freely condemned as odious and 
oppressive ; whilst he protected, against the imperial edicts, the pious 
cowardice of the soldiers who deserted a military for a monastic life. 
If we may credit his own declaration, it would have been easy for 
Gregory to have exterminated the Lombards by their domestic fac- 
tions, without leaving a king, a duke, or a count to save that unfor- 
tunate nation from the vengeance of their foes. As a Christian bishop, 
he preferred the salutary offices of peace ; his mediation appeased 
the tumult of arms ; but he was too conscious of the arts of the 
Greeks (i. e., the Eastern Romans) and the passions of the Lom- 
bards to engage his sacred promise for the observance of the truce. 
Disappointed in the hope of a general and lasting treaty he presumed 
to save his country without the consent of the Emperor or the 
Exarch. The sword of the enemy was suspended over Rome ; it 
was averted by the mild eloquence and seasonable gifts of the Pon- 
tiff who commanded the respect of heretics and barbarians. The 
merits of Gregory were treated by the Byzantine Court with reproach 
and insult ; but in the attachment of a grateful people he found the 
purest reward of a citizen, and the best right of a sovereign." * 

The time of Gregory, then, or a little before, appears to be about 
the first beginning of the exercise of temporal sovereignty by the 
popes, which sovereignty arose principally from the circumstance of 
Rome being separated from Ravenna, the seat of the Exarch, by 
hostile lands. The pontificate of Gregory the Great was from 590 to 
604. The secular sovereignty was taken away from the pope in 
1870 by the king of Italy. And reckoning back 1260 years, the lim- 
its of the prophecy, at the rate of thirty days for a month or 360 days 
Tor a year, it would place the beginning of this power about this 
time cr a little before, as we must consider that 1260 years of 360 
days each are not equal to the same number of ordinary years in 
length. This period of 1260 days or years refers not only to the 

* Milman's Gibbon's Rome, ch. XLV. 



240 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

great Roman empire of which we have treated, having Constantinople 
as the seat of government, but to this Ecclesiastico-civil Roman 
empire of which we are now treating; and as for the systems 
arising from the Protestant Reformation, which we have yet to 
notice, we shall leave their duration to be proved by the event. 
After the so-called restoration of the Western Empire by Charle- 
magne and the German emperors, the latter in the election of the 
popes continued to exercise the powers which had previously been 
exercised by the Roman emperors or their representatives the Ex- 
archs, and by the Gothic Kings of Italy ; and the importance of this 
prerogative increased with the temporal estate and spiritual jurisdic- 
tion of the Roman Church. In the aristocracy of this church the 
principal members of the clergy still formed a senate to assist the ad- 
ministration and to supply the vacancies of the bishop. Each of the 
parishes of Rome, which were 28 altogether, was governed by a pres- 
byter or cardinal-priest, a title which, though of humble origin, after- 
wards aspired to emulate the purple of kings. Their number was 
enlarged by the association of the seven deacons of the most consider- 
able hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the Lateran, and some 
dignitaries of the Church. The ecclesiastical senate was directed 
by the seven cardinal bishops of the Roman province, who were less oc- 
cupied in their diocese outside the city than by their weekly service 
in the Lateran and their superior share in the honors and author- 
ity of the apostolic see. On the death of the pope the bishops rec- 
ommended a successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals, 
and their choice was ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of 
the Roman people. But the election was imperfect, nor could the 
pontiff be legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the 
church, had signified his approbation and consent. The royal com- 
missioner examined on the spot the form and freedom of the pro- 
ceedings ; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the qualifica- 
tions of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of fidelity, and con- 
firmed to the new pope the donations which had successively en- 
riched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms the rival 
claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor ; and in a 
synod of bishops he undertook to judge, to condemn and to punish 
the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty on 
the senate and people who engaged to prefer the candidate most ac- 
ceptable to his majesty ; his successors anticipated and prevented 
their choice ; they bestowed the see of Rome on their chancellors 
and preceptors ; and whatever might be the merit of a Frank or Ger- 
man, his name on the list of the pontiffs sufficiently attests the inter- 
position of a foreign power. The competitor who found himself ex- 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 241 

eluded by the cardinals sometimes appealed to the passions or avarice 
of the multitude. The city was stained with blood, and the most 
powerful Roman senators held the see of St. Peter in a long and dis- 
graceful servitude. The popes of the ninth and tenth centuries were 
insulted, imprisoned and murdered by their tyrants ; and such was 
their indigence after the loss and usurpation of the Ecclesiastical 
patrimony that, in many cases, they could neither support the state 
of a prince, nor exercise the charity of a priest. The influence of 
two prostitutes, sisters, Marioza and Theodora, who lived during this 
period, was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and 
amorous intrigues. The most attentive of their lovers were honored 
with the popedom, and their reign may have suggested to other ages 
the story of a female pope. The son and grandson of Marioza were 
seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen 
that the first of these became head of the Roman Church. The youth 
and manhood of the young pontiff were of a similar complexion, and 
the pilgrims from different nations could bear witness to the charges 
which were urged against him in a Roman synod and in the presence 
of the emperor, Otho the Great. As John XI.* had renounced the 
dress and decencies of his profession and had taken up the profession 
of a soldier, in his military character, which he sustained at the same 
time with that of pontiff, he may not perhaps be dishonored by the 
wine which he drank, the blood which he spilt, the conflagrations 
which he kindled, or his licentious pursuits of gaming and hunting. 
His open simony might have been caused by distress ; and his blas- 
phemous invocations of Jupiter and Venus might possibly not have 
been serious. But with all this we read that this worthy son of 
Marioza lived in public adultery with the matrons of Rome ; that the 
Lateran was turned into a school for prostitution, and that his rapes 
of virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting 
the shrine of St. Peter, lest in their act of devotion they should be 
violated by his successor. 

While the attention of the Emperors was directed to more allur- 
ing objects or while they were occupied with the defence of their 
hereditary dominions, Rome occasionally experienced intestine dis- 
cords from the ambition of usurpers. Amidst the ruins of Italy the 
famous Marioza invited a usurper, Hugh, King of Burgundy, to as- 
sume the character of her third husband, and he was introduced by 
her faction into the mole of Hadrian, or castle of St. Angelo, which 



* There is indeed some confusion in the history of the popes of this period. Muratori has 
discovered John XI. to have heen the son of Alberic, the husband of Marioza. 
16 



242 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome. Alberic, her 
son by the first marriage, was compelled to attend at the wedding ; 
but his ungraceful and reluctant service was chastised by a blow from 
his new father. The blow was productive of a revolution. " Ro- 
mans ! " exclaimed the youth, " once you were masters of the world, 
and these Burgundians the most abject of your slaves. They now 
reign, those voracious and brutal savages, and my injury is the com- 
mencement of your servitude. " The alarm bell rung to arms in every 
quarter of the city ; the Burgundians retreated with precipitation ; 
Marioza was imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, pope 
John the eleventh, was reduced to the exercise of his spiritual func- 
tions. With the title of prince, Alberic possessed over twenty years 
the government of Rome ; and he is said to have gratified the people 
by restoring the office of the consuls and tribunes. 

His son and heir assumed with the pontificate, the name of John 
XII. He, like his predecessor, was provoked by the Lombards to 
seek a deliverer for the Church and republic. Otho II. performed these 
services on his coming to receive the imperial crown. The festival 
of his coronation was disturbed by the secret conflict of prerogative 
and freedom, and the Emperor commanded his guards not to stir from 
his side lest he should be assaulted and murdered at the foot of the 
altar. Before he repassed the Alps, he chastised the rebels and John 
XII. for his ingratitude. The pope was degraded in a synod ; the 
prefect was mounted on an ass, whipped through the city and im- 
prisoned ; thirteen of the most guilty were hanged; others were 
mutilated or banished ; and this severe process the Emperor justified 
by a reference to the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian. 
The voice of fame has accused Otho for a perfidious and bloody act, 
the massacre of the senators whom he had invited to his table under 
the fair semblance of hospitality and friendship ; but the authority 
on which we have this is suspected. In the reign of his son, Otho 
III., Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the German yoke, and 
the consul Crescentius was the leader of the Republicans. From the 
condition of a subject and an exile he twice rose to the command of 
the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a 
conspiracy for restoring the authority of the eastern Roman Em- 
perors. In the fortress of St. Angelo he maintained an obstinate 
siege till he was betrayed by a promise of safety ; his body was sus- 
pended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlement of 
the castle. By a turn of fortune, Otho III., after separating his troops, 
was besieged three days in his palace without food ; and a disgrace- 
ful escape saved him from the fury of the Romans. The senator 
Ptolemy was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 243 

enioyed the pleasure or the repute of revenging her husband by a 
poison which she administered to her imperial lover. It is said to 
have been the design of this Otho to erect his throne in Italy, and to 
revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy ; but this design he 
or his successors never accomplished, probably owing to their con- 
tinued preference for the royal seat of their ancestors, and to the 
imminent personal danger to which they would be subject from 
strangers and Romans. 

After a long series of scandals, the see of St. Peter was reformed 
and exalted by Pope Gregory VII., 1050-1100. This ambitious monk 
devoted his life to the execution of two projects : I. To fix in the 
college of cardinals the freedom and independence of the election of 
the Pope, and to abolish forever the right of interference on the 
part of the Emperors and the Roman people. II. To bestow or 
resume the Western empire as a fief or benefice of the Church, and 
to extend the temporal dominion of the successor of St. Peter over 
the kings and kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty years, 
the first of these designs was accomplished, by the firm support of 
the ecclesiastical order whose liberty was connected with that of 
their chief. But the accomplishment of the second design, though 
it was attended with some practical success, was vigorously resisted 
by the secular power, and finally extinguished by the progress of 
reason. 

Gregory VII., who did so much to establish the Papal Sovereignty 
and to extend its influence, was in his old age driven from Rome and 
died in exile. Thirty-six of his successors maintained a very unequal 
contest with the Romans ; their age and dignity were often violated ; 
the streets of Rome and the churches in the solemn rites of religion 
exhibited on many occasions a scene of blood and murder. At 
length in the year 1309, the Popes, having abandoned Rome, took 
up their residence at Avignon, in France, where they remained over 
seventy years. When, after the expiration of this period, they 
effected a return, they still occasionally encountered some opposition 
in the city. Gregory XL, survived his return about fourteen months. 
After his death the conclave elected Urban VI. But after he had 
been installed into office, adored, invested, and crowned in the cus- 
tomary manner, and his supremacy was acknowledged at Rome, 
Avignon, and in the Latin world, the cardinals reversed their 
decision, excommunicated him, and elected a new Pope, Robert of 
Geneva, cal 7 ;d Clement VII., in his place. The Romans were dis- 
satisfied with the last election on account of the foreign birth of 
Clement, and rose en masse against the cardinals, the majority of 
whom were French. Thirty thousand rebels surrounded the con- 
clave : " Death, or an Italian Pope" was their unanimous cry. Some 
preparations were made for burning the cardinals if they should not 



244 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

comply with their wishes ; and had they chosen another foreigner 
for Pope, it is probable they would never have escaped alive from 
the Vatican. The features of the tyrant could now be discovered 
in Urban, who could walk in his garden and recite his breviary, 
while he heard from an adjacent chamber, six cardinals groaning on 
the rack. The cardinals left the matter as it was, and the merits of 
their double choice made a subject which was long agitated in the 
catholic schools. Thus a schism was created which destroyed the 
peace of Europe for forty years. From the banks of the Tiber and 
the Rhone the hostile pontiffs encountered each other with the pen 
and the sword : the civil and ecclesiastical orders of society were 
disturbed, and the Romans had their full share of the troubles which 
they might be said to have authorized. By the avocations of the 
schism ; by foreign arms and popular tumults, Urban VI. and his 
three immediate successors were often compelled to interrupt their 
residence in the Vatican. The opposite parties at Rome still exercised 
their deadly feuds ; the Vicar of Christ, who had levied a military 
force, chastised the rebels with the gibbet, the sword, and the dagger, 
and in a friendly conference eleven deputies of the people were 
perfidiously murdered and cast into the streets. In the year 1434, 
the people rose in arms against the Pope : elected seven men to 
govern the republic, and a constable of the capitol ; imprisoned the 
Pope's nephew : besieged himself in the palace, and shot volleys of 
arrows into his bark as he escaped in the habit of a monk down the 
Tiber. But he possessed in his castle of Angelo a garrison, which 
remained faithful to him, and a train of artillery ; their batteries 
incessantly thundered on the city, and a bullet dexterously pointed 
broke down the barricade of the bridge, and scattered with a single 
shot the heroes of the republic. A rebellion of five months exhausted 
their constancy ; the troops of St. Peter again occupied the capitol ; 
the demagogues departed to their homes ; the most guilty were 
executed or exiled, and the Pope's legate at the head of two thou- 
sand foot and four thousand horse was hailed as the father of the 
city. From this time the Popes maintained an army in the citadel 
which they exercised in compelling peace and obedience ; and 
before the year 1500 they had acquired over Rome a more absolute 
dominion than they had ever possessed before, which they have con- 
tinued to exercise till within our time. 

Their temporal claims were readily deduced from the fabulous 
or genuine donations of the darker ages, but, to relate with particu- 
larity the steps by which they came to their final settlement would 
engage us too far in the transactions of Italy and Europe. The 
crimes of Pope Alexander VI., the martial operations of Julius II., 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 245 

and the statesmanlike policy of Leo X., have been adorned by the 
pens of the ablest historians of the times. In the first period of 
their conquests till the expedition of Charles VIIL, the Popes might 
successfully wrestle with adjacent princes and states whose military 
force was equal or inferior to their own. But as soon as the monarchs 
of France, and Germany, and Spain, contended with arms for the 
dominion of Italy they supplied with art their want of strength, and 
concealed in a labyrinth of wars and treaties their aspiring views. 
The nice balance of the Vatican was often subverted by the soldiers 
of the north and west, united under the standard of Charles V ; the 
fluctuating policy of Clement VII. exposed his person and dominions 
to the conqueror, and Rome was abandoned during seven months to 
a lawless army more cruel and rapacious than the Goths and Vandals. 
After this severe lesson, together with that which they were being 
taught by the Protestant reformers, the Popes contracted their ambi- 
tion which was almost satisfied, resumed the character of a common 
parent, and abstained from all offensive hostilities except in a hasty 
quarrel when the vicar of Christ and the Turkish Sultan were armed 
at the same time against the Kingdom of Naples. 

Through a forgery of the Vatican and the ignorance of the times 
it was long and universally believed in Europe that Constantine 
had invested the Popes with the civil dominion of Rome. In the 
beginning of the twelfth century, the truth and validity of this 
donation was disputed by a Sabine monastery. But in the fifteenth 
century, with the revival of learning, this fictitious deed was com- 
pletely exposed, especially by the pen of Laurentius Valla, a learned 
Roman; and such is the silent and irresistible progress of reason, that 
before the end of the next age, that fable, so long believed, was 
rejected by the contempt of historians and poets, and the modest 
censure of the advocates of the Roman Church; and even the Popes 
themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar on 
account of it. Fraud is often the resource of weakness and cunning, 
and on their arrival at the Eternal City with their armies, the strong, 
though ignorant barbarian kings and emperors had often been 
entangled in the net of sacerdotal policy. The Vatican and Lateran 
were an arsenal which, according to the occasion, have produced or 
concealed a various collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or 
spurious or suspicious acts, as they tended to promote the interests 
of the Roman Church. Before the end of the eighth century some 
scribe attached to St. Peter, thought to be the notorious Isodore,* 
composed the decretals and the donation of Constantine, the two 



Cardinal Baronius strangely enough suspected it to be a forgery of the Eastern Romans. 



246 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

magic pillars of the ecclesiastical and civil power of the Popes. This 
remarkable donation was first introduced to the world in an Epistle 
of Adrian I. to Charlemagne, in which he exhorts that monarch to 
imitate the liberality and revive the name of the great Constantine. 
According to the legend Constantine was healed of the leprosy and 
purified in the waters of baptism * by St. Sylvester, bishop of Rome ; 
and never was a physician more abundantly recompensed. His royal 
patron withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter, declared 
his resolution of founding a new capital in the East, and resigned to 
the Popes the free and independent sovereignty of Rome. Italy and 
the West. So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the dark 
ages that this most absurd of fables was received with equal rever- 
ence both in the Eastern and Western provinces of the Roman 
world. The Emperors and the Romans were incapable of discerning 
a forgery which subverted their rights and freedom, and the fabulous 
origin was lost in the substantial effects. The name of Dominus or 
Lord was inscribed on the coin of the bishop, their title was acknowl- 
edged by the acclamations and oaths of allegiance of their citizens, 
and with the free or reluctant consent of the German emperors they 
had long exercised a sovereign or subordinate jurisdiction over the 
city and the patrimony of St. Peter. 

Doubtless the remembrance of the deception, whether or not any 
of their forefathers had been deceived by it, intensified the hatred of 
the German potentates against the Church of Rome at the era of 
the Reformation. But it appears pretty evident the Western rulers 
were never much influenced by the supposed act of donation or the 
decretals of Constantine ; for they alwa} r s recognized themselves as 
the kings of Rome and Italy ; and perhaps it has been remarked 
there was always particular care taken that Rome and Italy should 
have a sovereign besides the Pope. But, on the other hand, while 
these secular rulers regarded themselves as the kings of Rome and 
Italy, the Popes never appear to have assumed that title, never 
assumed the crown of the Western Empire ; but satisfied themselves 
with their bishop's tiara of three crowns, which, while it denoted 
their headship of the Catholic Church, also indicated their triple 
character of sovereigns of heaven, earth, and hell. Moreover, the 
Pope never represented any of the supreme secular rulers of Rome ; 
he did not represent the kings, the consuls, the decemvirs, the 
military tribunes with consular power, the dictators, or the emperors ; 
but he represented the Exarch of Ravenna, the lieutenant of the 



* Our readers will remember that Constantine was not baptized till just before his death 
when that rite was administered to him by Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia. 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 247 

Emperor, who was of the seventh class of rulers by which Rome was 
governed ; it was the Exarchate of Ravenna that the Pope acquired 
from Pepin, and he was, therefore, in his civil capacity, the Exarch, 
one of that class of rulers ; but in his ecclesiastical character he was 
different from him, and thus constituted an eighth class of rulers for 
Rome. 

During the era of the Crusades, A. D., 1100-1300, Rome was 
revered by the Western provincials as the Metropolis of the world, 
as the throne of the Pope and the Emperor, who from the Eternal 
City derived their title, their honors, and their right to exercise 
temporal dominion. The Pope was regarded as the Father or head 
of the Catholic Church ; under the influence of the successive Popes 
the conquest of Germany and Britain and all the other barbarous 
nations of Europe had been gained or compelled to the Catholic 
faith. The secular power of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Roman 
Empire proper, yielded to the Crusaders in their capture of Constan- 
tinople, and their reign there for fifty-seven years may be significant 
of the universal conquest which this power would attain in the 
Empire, as denoted by the representation in the prophecy of the 
power which we are considering, and which had its centre of influence 
at Rome. The heart and arm of this power, or the German Empire, 
never belonged to the Roman Empire proper, but attained what it 
did attain of it by conquest. The Emperors and the Popes were at 
the head of the nations of Catholic Christendom ; the secular force 
of this symbolic beast was essentially foreign to the old Roman 
Empire, formerly governed from Rome, then from Constantinople ; 
and the Popes, after acquiring such unbounded influence as they 
did, used the sword of the barbarians in propagating their doctrines, 
and in accomplishing the objects of their ambition. It is readily 
seen, therefore, from this whole discourse that this symbolic beast of 
Rev. XVII, though having seven heads and ten horns as the one 
represented in ch. XIII had, signifies a different combination of 
power from that, though partly contained in it ; a power in which 
the German element was essentially the secular force ; for the 
Franks who overcame the Roman province of Gaul and settled 
therein, as well as the Anglo-Saxons who supplanted the Romans 
in Britain; and then the Normans from Scandinavia, afterwards in 
Britain and in Southern Europe, were all of Gothic origin. So 
that the great exponent of this power implied in the two horns of 
Rev. XIII, 11-18, and in the ten horns Rev. XVII is found in the 
Gothic or Germanic nations with their emperors and kings at their 
heads in company with the bishop of Rome governing Roman Catho- 
lic Christendom, civilly and religiously. This was largely a power 



248 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

foreign to the old Roman empire, extending far beyond its limits to 
the north and northwest. 

The symbolic representation therefore of the beast and the 
woman seated thereon is exponental of that new combination of 
government, religious and political, whereof the pope was the 
acknowledged supreme head and whereof the nations principally of 
the Gothic race constituted the body, as well as largely the intel- 
lectual and physical force. 

In considering the French nation in its connection with the 
Papacy I may say: That the French republic should continue to 
run a prosperous course for many ages yet to come is much to be 
desired for the good of the inhabitants of France in their succes- 
sive generations. The standing army now (1889) maintained in 
France is, however, unnatural and abnormal for that country as a 
republic; but this the authorities would not think it prudent to very 
largely diminish while there are such large standing armies main- 
tained in the bordering nations. A mutual agreement for disarma- 
ment among "the great powers," as they are called, with an 
international law to which they would all submit, on the basis of 
arbitration, would leave no necessity for other bodies of men under 
arms in those countries than their respective police organizations. 
Such an international agreement and law is certainly a necessity; 
and a general disarmament by those great powers would be nothing 
but what is due to their peoples, who have been too long oppressed 
by taxation for the support of those large armies. The money 
now used for the purpose of keeping those countries on such a 
strong war footing might much better be spent in the properly 
feeding, clothing, and educating their peoples; and in the mission- 
ary work at home and in foreign lands. 

But although the continuity of the French republic be, as I say, 
much to be desired, still I fear such a crisis may come internally 
to France as may unfortunately lead that people to burst through 
the bounds of a respectable moderation; and, contrary to their 
real interests, resort again to an imperial administration. But this 
they have no need whatever to do in order to exalt themselves in 
the eyes of the world in a military point of view ; for looking at 
their past history there is enough found in it to show the French 
one of the greatest military peoples on earth. The military glories 
of their Charlemague they can afford to divide with the Germans, 
as I find they may be willing to divide also those of their Hugh 
Capet ; but still they have left their magnificent house of Bourbon, 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 249 

beginning with their Henry of Navarre and including their great 
for all the ages Louis XIV. Afterwards they have their man of 
destiny, Napoleon Buonaparte, who appears to have been a greater 
military genius than either of the preceding restorers of the western 
empire, Charlemagne or Hugh (Otho) the great; but who, doubt- 
less, did France much more harm than good. His glories, how- 
ever, are yet fresh in the French mind at the time when he brought 
the potentates of Europe to bow at the feet of France; glories 
which dazzled; were but for the moment; and cost the French 
nation much more in blood, sufferings, and treasure than they 
were worth. But is there any preindication that the name of 
Bonaparte will be yet all triumphant in and for France? There 
may be; and if the name of Bonaparte again triumphs in France 
may it be in the cause of a peace-loving and prosperous republic ! 
Looking at how well the republic has done and is doing there can 
be no excuse for any one in the future seeking to exalt imperialism 
in France. Rome as a republic gained her ascendancy among the 
nations and so you may say did France under the first Buonaparte ; 
but the accursed bauble of imperialism was sought, and, having 
been adopted, soon brought the loss of virility to the people as a 
whole, and decay and destruction with it. 

That the name of Buonaparte has in it some charm for theFrench 
people would seem indicated in the vote given in 1849 for Louis 
Napoleon as president of the republic. The vote of the French 
nation, which was then unquestionably free, was three to one for 
him; but having been elected to the presidency, he bent his mind 
upon the imperial title. As the next election approached in 1851 
he applied to the legislative assembly to procure an amendment of 
the constitution, so that he might be a second time eligible to the 
presidency; but they having refused this and being about to im- 
peach him, he sprang upon them the trap called " coup oV etat" 
by which he displaced in an hour the legislative assembly and 
usurped the supreme power. In his confidence for the execution of 
this design were only three others namely, the heads of the army, 
of the police, and one other person. The too first, however, may 
not be understood as having entered into any conspiracy with him 
for that end, but as simply having obeyed his orders as president of 
the republic. The leaders of the assembly and the high military 
officers of the republic he had arrested in their beds at 5 o'clock in 
the morning of December 22nd, 1851, and each in a separate vehicle 
transported rapidly from Paris. The remaining members of the 



250 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

assembly coming to their place in the morning were treated with 
indignity, some of them being arrested and imprisoned a few days. 
Many of the French patriots were transported to the unhealthy 
swamps of French Guiana. Louis Napoleon then called upon the 
people to vote aye or nay to the questions. "Do you desire Louis 
Napoleon to hold office for ten years." The vote having been 
taken showed a majority for him of live-sevenths. In the next 
year (1852) he made the tour of France and won the people over 
to the restoration of the empire by his engaging manners. As 
emperor he was styled Napoleon III. The semblance of a constitu- 
tion, with a council and lower house, which he established, was so 
dependent upon himself as to strengthen rather than share in his 
power. 

Before the Roman dominion was established over Gaul there was 
no one government which we know of that had dominion over th e 
whole of that country. So far as Julius Caesar gives us the history 
of ancient Gaul, in connection with his wars therein, the country was 
evidently divided up among several, perhaps many chiefs before or 
at this time. We may say, therefore, that the Roman is the first 
government over Gaul, considered as a whole, of which we have 
definite knowledge. If then we begin with the Roman dynasty in 
Gaul and reckon the dynasties in succession we shall, I think, fairly 
discover the imperial Bonapartist to be the eighth, and to have 
arisen from the seventh, namely, the Triconsulate, Napoleon having 
been appointed by the Directory First of the three consuls. The 
dynasties are as follows : — 

The Roman 60 B. C. to 440 A. D. 

Merovingian 440 A. D. — 687 

Carlovingian 687 — 960 

' Capetian and Valoisian 960 — 1589 

Bourbon 1589 — 1792 

National Convention and Directory.. 1792 — 1799 

Triconsulate 1799 — 1804 

Empire 1804 — 1815 

The figures I have given for the duration of the first three 
dynasties are only near approximations respectively. The house 
of Valois comes properly under the head of Capet, the connection 
of the history showing plainly that it is in descent in the male line 
from the kings of France of the house of Capet, as the houses so 
called of York and Lancaster in the English history were in like 



PAPAL SUPREMACY. 251 

manner from the house of Plantagent and properly reckoned under 
this head. 

In the beginning of September, 1792 " the Legislative Assembly," 
which had been in session since May 5th, 1789, closed its career, 
and was succeeded by an Assembly still more violent, called " the 
National Convention : " This last body on the 20th Sept., 1792, 
declared the regal power abolished and a republic establishes in its 
stead. On the 21st January, 1793, king Louis XVI. was beheaded 
by the National Convention ; his queen Maria Antoinette, daughter 
of the empress Maria Theresa of Austria, being executed later in 
the same year. 

In 1794 the National Convention remodeled the Constitution so 
as to make it less democratic. The executive was now intrusted to 
a Directory, consisting of five persons, who were assisted by a leg- 
slative body of two councils, that of "the ancients" of two hun- 
dred and fifty, and " the council of five hundred." All laws were to 
originate with the five hundred, but not to pass without the sanction 
of the ancients. Some of the provisions of the new constitution 
were unacceptable to the Parisians and the National Guards, 30,000 
of whom rose in arms. Barras, one of the five directors brought 
forward and placed at the head of the army of the republic in Paris 
a young Corsican officer, who promptly reduced them to order. 
This was an officer, who had distinguished himself at the siege of 
Toulon, and whose name was Napoleon Buonaparte : 1795. This 
man then for four years pursued a generally victorious career at 
the head of the armies of the republic, beyond the boundaries of 
France. But meantime France was torn by factions, which the 
directorial government found it difficult to manage. Buonaparte, 
therefore, with the Abbe Sieyes, planned another revolution, in 
which the Directory placed him at the head of the republican forces 
in Paris. At their head he proceeded to the legislature, met at 
St. Cloud, and, like Cromwell, expelled the members at the point 
of the bayonet. Upon this, in 1799, three consuls were appointed, 
as the executive of the republic, of whom Buonaparte was first. A 
victorious course abroad and a consolidation of his power by a 
conciliation of the great parties, religious and political, at home, 
procured that in four years more, 1803, he was declared by the 
senate first consul for life. In this year several acts of remarkable 
cruelty are ascribed to Buonaparte, such as his allowing Touseaint 
Louverture, president of St. Domingo, to die of neglect in a prison 
in Paris; and his condemning the young duke D'Enghien to doath 



252 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

on the accusation of having conspired with others against his life. 
The obsequious senate, in this same year, offered him the title of 
emperor, when he begun to prepare for the coronation of himself 
and his wife Josephine, which took place on Dec. 2, 1804. 

Here then we have an eighth dynasty for France, which was also 
of the seventh, and disappeared much faster than that celebrated 
seventh-eighth dvnastv of the seven hills, which we have contem- 
plated under the present head in connection with the prophecy of 
Rev. XVII. In 1871 Napoleon III. and "his Holiness'' fell together, 
in regard to their temporalities: and Napoleon III. is still of the 
eighth dynasty. King Louis Philip of ;i the house of Orleans," which 
intervened (1830-1848) between Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. 
beins in male line of the house of Bourbon. With the Carloviusrian 
house of France the Papal monarchy arose ; and with the Napoleonic 
dynasty it fell, and during that long period there appears, on the 
whole, to have been a much greater unanimity between the Papal 
and French monarchies than between the Papal monarchy and the 
German empire. The time, too, of the Christian Roman empire 
of Constantinople is about the same in length with these two 
sovereignties, if we suppose 750 to have been about the year 
Pepin was crowned first king of France of the Carlovingian 
dynasty ; and 328 the year when Constantine made the Christian 
the established religion of the Roman empire. (1871 — 750=1121 
years): (1153 — 328=1125 years.) There are, doubtless, some 
considerations in connection with these dates of beginnings and 
terminations, the full understanding of which would perhaps show 
the deviations to be equal. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 253 



The Nations of " the Reformation " are Gothic ; namely (1) 
German and (2) Anglo-Saxon-Norman, they being repre- 
sented in the Prophecy by the two horns of the sym- 
bolic PREFIGURATION OF REVELATION XIII., 11-18; AND 

their systems of government, combining the qhurch and 
the State, being images of the Western Roman empire 

SYSTEM, ESTABLISHED BY CHARLEMAGNE AND OtHO ; OR IMAGES 
OF IMAGES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE SYSTEM ESTABLISHED AT CON- 
STANTINOPLE. They are also images of the Papal mon- 
archy AS THIS IS PREFIGURED IN REVELATION XVII. 

The Germanic nations wherein the Reformation took place were 
not included in the old pagan Roman empire: Saxony, where it 
originated, was conquered by Charlemagne after many years of war. 
In the time of Charlemagne, however, Saxony extended from the 
Rhine to the Baltic and from the German ocean on the west to Bo- 
hemia on the east, so that including many nations, which were 
afterwards called by other names, it might be thought but another 
name for Germany. This is also true to the derivation of the 
national name, for Sacai, whence Sachsen, is but another name for 
Scuthai or Scythian, whence the nation of the Gaer-men, Spear 
men or Germans. They are traceable to the same stock as are the 
Gaedhal or Gaels of the British isles.* 

It is said that at several intervals before the time of Charlemagne 
the Saxons to the north of the Rhine were tributary to the French 
monarchs of the line of Clovis and Pepin d'Heristal, but that they 
as often revolted. It was not before the year 785 that Charlemagne 
had accomplished the conquest of the Saxons and had compelled 
their king, Witikind, and his people, under penalty of death to 
receive the papal religion and baptism. To this end he is said to 
have sacrificed many thousand Saxon lives. As we have seen in 
passing, under the preceding, head, in the interval of the five cen- 
turies between Charlemagne and the fourteenth century other north 
German nations were brought into the Roman Catholic church by 
the secular force of the Papal Germanic empire. Into this religion 
the Gothic nations entered largely, not willingly; and when their 
time came to oppose the papal polity with any legal show of right 
on their side they did so quiet zealously. 

* The deriviation of the name Frank, i.e., Fran-Chaeth, indicates the Franks and Saxons to 
be of a common stock. Frank, as a national appellative, means the same as Sachsen, or Scyth- 
ian, that is, literally, the child of Seth or Scaeth. 



254 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

The Saxons of the empire of Charlemagne were of the same stock 
as were those Saxons who had immigrated to Britain three or three 
and a half centuries before. In regard to their receptivity of the 
papal Christianity the British Saxons seem to have had (although 
long separated as to time and place) about the same frame of mind 
as had their brethren or rather those of the same race on the con- 
tinent. This system of Christianity the Anglo-Saxons were evi- 
dently slow to receive. It is not till the time of Alfred that there 
is noticeable much enthusiasm displayed in the cause of the Roman 
Catholic religion bv the Anglo-Saxon kings. About the vear 950, 
or fifty years after the death of Alfred, Dunstan, abbot of Glaston- 
bury, flourished. He was an enterprising monk who bent his en- 
ergies in favor of establishing monasteries as well as in the practice 
of celibacy, among the clerg}^ in England. Contemporary with 
him was the celebrated or infamous Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, 
who disfigured the beautiful Elgiva, as mentioned before. 

At the beginning of the Reformation the English race entered 
into the change with as great ardor as did the people of the same 
race on the continent ; and the earnestness which they generally 
displayed in separating from the old polity when an opportunity 
presented itself for them with any show of legality on their side to 
do so, would rather indicate that the papal Christian polity did not 
suit the Saxon nature; that is, speaking strictly, the Germans north 
of the Rhine and in Britain. Whether or not these peoples found 
the papal religion to have been uncongenial to them, while estab- 
lished by law amongst them, it is certain that the sober and unex- 
citable nature and frame of mind of the Saxons may have been the 
general cause why that people did not, as other peoples, take up 
earlier and more zealously with the religion of Rome, which has so 
much in it that is adapted to take hold of the senses. But 
at the time of the reformation there was such an aggregation 
of lone-standing abuses laid to the charge of the old established 
system that those sober-minded people, though never so averse to 
change, could not now shut the eyes of their understanding to the 
urgent need of a general change of polity and a^thorough renova- 
tion of the old system. 

The nations of the German empire in general, which had been 
brought into Christianity in whatever way on to the year 1000, ap- 
pear to have considered themselves the children of the church; for, 
although their emperors had often such disagreements with the 
popes as amounted to war, they yet were wont to receive their 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 255 

crown from his hands or from his deputies, the bishops, and gen- 
erally evinced respect for the church. These were the German 
Christian nations then, with those brought into the church in what- 
ever way after them, — say from the year 1000 to 1300 A. D., who, 
with the Anglo-Saxon race, are symbolized by the two horns of the 
prophetic prefiguration of Rev. XIII., 11—18 ; and by the ten horns 
of that of Rev. XVII. These were they that were preindicated to 
give their power and their strength unto that papal Christian polity 
and then to turn round and h;ite, maltreat, and abuse it in a remark- 
able way: Rev. XVII., 12-18. Those who in the ages of the 
German-Roman empire had been so strong in support of the old 
system became after the opening of the reformation quite as strong 
in their opposition to it. 

Although there had been some persecuted variously and put 
to death in all the ages of the Christian Roman empire be- 
fore on account of religion, yet the Reformation of religion, 
as historically understood, commenced in the year 1517 by 
the debates of Martin Luther with John Tetzel, the pope's 
legate, relative to the sale of Indulgences and the pope's power to 
forgive sins. "While the Roman pontiff," says Mosheim,* 
" slumbered in security at the. head of the church, and saw nothing 
throughout the vast extent of his dominions but tranquility and 
submission, an obscure and inconsiderable person arose on a sudden, 
in the year 1517, and laid the foundation for this long expected 
change by opposing with undaunted resolution his single force to 
the torrent of papal ambition and despotism." This extraordinary 
person was Martin Luther, a monk of the order of St. Augustin, 
now in the thirty-fourth year of his age* he having been born at 
Eisleben, in Saxony, on the 10th of November, 1483, the same year 
in which Torquemada established the modern Spanish Inquisition 
at Seville, two years before the accession of Henry VII. , the first of 
the house of Tudor in England, and nine years before the discovery 
of America by Columbus. This man was destined to be instru- 
mental in bringing about a wonderful revolution in human opinions 
and in human affairs. To his mother he attributed his early bent 
to religious devotion, by which, though " educated for a lawyer," he 
became a monk; and this course of his was assisted also by the 
impression made on his mind by the death of a friend, struck down 
by lightning while standing at his side. His parents were people, 
as we would say, in only moderate circumstances; he wrought in 

* Eccles. Hist., Cent. XVL 



256 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

humble occupations ; and when he became a monk, in the humble 
spirit of his order, he solicited support for his monastery in the city 
of Wittenberg. 

Before he was twenty years of age he had not seen the Bible, 
but, in 1507, finding a Latin copy in the library of his monastery, 
he read and studied it. Reflecting, in connection with the truths 
therein contained, upon the history and present operations of the 
Catholic church, how truth had been wronged by ignorant piety 
and misrepresented by hypocritical infidelity his soul was fired with 
new energy such as he had not experienced before. When Indul- 
gences were first sold to raise money for the crusades they were 
understood as commutations of prescribed penances for sins com- 
mitted or to be committed; they were, of course, yet understood 
in the same way; and Pope Leo X. made use of such merchandise 
to raise money to pay a debt, and to complete the mighty edifice of 
St. Peter's Church at Rome. 

Tetzel, a monk of the Inquisitorial order of St. Dominic, used his 
eloquence in persuading the people to purchase these Indulgences. 
But Luther, who had been preparing himself to deliver a course of 
lectures on Scriptural repentance, was led into an examination by 
which he detected the nature of this system, and lost no time in 
publicly taking issue with the Dominican. Tetzel, who had then 
great influence with the potentates, ecclesiastical and civil, might 
with a word have delivered Luther to the inquisitorial fires, with 
which he threatened him; but Luther's time had not yet come; 
he had a great work yet to do and was preserved. Such a reputa- 
tion had Luther soon acquired that he was made professor of 
theology in the University of Wittenberg, an institution which had 
lately been founded by the elector of Saxony. To scriptural 
studies, therefore, he applied himself mostly and he soon produced 
ninety-five propositions in the scholastic fashion, denouncing the 
doctrines of penance, purgatory and indulgences; and, inviting a 
public disputation on these subjects, he hung his propositions on 
the door of a church in Wittenberg. No one accepting his chal- 
lenge he published his propositions by which went forth to 
the world a powerful blast for his proposed reformation. The 
effect produced on the German mind was wonderful; all the people 
were now on the side of Luther in the debate and to such a degree 
were their feelings enlisted in his behalf that Tetzel had now more 
cause to fear violence than to use it. This merchant of Indulgences, 
however, in order to recover his ground or to justify his position 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 257 

with the people published an answer to Luther in one hundred and 
fifty-six propositions; but as they were based upon the infallibility 
of the pope, while Luther's theses were based upon the Scriptures, 
there could be no debate, since there was no common standard of 
reference, and so the question was left open. In an assembly 
of his monks Tetzel burnt Luther's book. In the University of 
Wittenbergthe students, loth to see their preceptor thus disrespected, 
publicly burnt that of Tetzel. The court of Rome, learning of 
those proceedings, determined to suppress Luther as soon as possi- 
ble. Cardinal Cajetan was sent into Germany and so prevailed 
with the emperor Maximilian, by means of monetary considerations 
and otherwise, that the latter officiously requested the pope to ex- 
tinguish the new heresv. Luther was forthwith summoned to 
Rome, and, delivered as he was by the emperor to Papal venge- 
ance, would doubtless have sunk in despair were it not that he 
was upheld by his own magnanimity and by thought of the righteous- 
ness of his cause. In thinking over whom he might apply to, who 
would serve as his protector in the perilous circumstances in which 
he was placed, his mind rested upon Frederic, elector of Saxony. 
He knew this elector's vote was important to Maximilian in favor 
of the election of his grandson Charles V, as his successor in the 
empire. He, therefore, having sought, providentially obtained his 
protection ; and, instead of having to go to Rome, he was by the 
elector's request, allowed to appear for trial before a council at 
Augsburg. Learning, however, that his destruction was resolved 
upon, Luther made his escape to Wittenberg. He now hesitated 
not to publish his opinions abroad ; whereupon the Pope excom- 
municated him publicly. Upon a pile, which he had erected for 
the purpose, Luther publicly burned the papal bull of excommuni- 
cation, his intrepidity probably saving both him and his cause. 

Charles V. having succeeded to the empire convoked an assem- 
bly of its princes to meet at Worms in order to suppress the new 
heresy. Before this assembly, over which the emperor presided, 
Luther was cited to appear, an opportunity which he gladly em- 
braced ; for to this assembly, his friends remonstrating, he said he 
would go, " though there were as many devils in Worms as there were 
tiles on the houses." The elector Frederic procured for him the em- 
peror's safe conduct for a certain number of days ; and having gone to 
Worms the favorable reception he met with from the public of the 
city showed the estimation in which they held him. Brought bo- 
fore his judges Iluther appeared calm and respectful. "Are you 

17 



258 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the author of these books?" he was asked. He replied: " I 
am." " Will you," was next asked, " retract the opinions herein 
expressed?" To this he answered that he required time for con- 
sideration. After two days he again appeared before the judges 
and answered in the negative as follows: " Unless I shall be con- 
vinced by Scripture (for I can put no faith in popes and councils, 
as it is evident that they have frequently erred and contradicted 
each other), unless my conscience shall be convinced by the word 
of God, I neither will nor can recant ; since it is unworthy of an 
honest man to act contrary to his own conviction. Here I stand; 
it is impossible for me to act otherwise, so help me God." By the 
emperor Charles, who took his forwardness as effrontery, the ban 
of the empire was now added to the excommunication pronounced by 
the pope, so that Luther, the moment his safe conduct expired, 
should be an outlaw. The elector Frederic, seeing this, had him, 
on his return, apprehended by armed men and conveyed to the 
Castle of Wartburg. Here it was that Luther performed his trans- 
lation of the Scriptures into the German language, in which work 
he was doubtless assisted somewhat by his friend Melanthon. 
While yet under a sentence of death which any one was at liberty 
to execute Luther showed his faith and courage by sallying forth 
from his confinement and returning to Wittenberg. Here he ex- 
erted himself in composing the differences which had arisen mean- 
time among the friends of the reformation. In the castle of Wart- 
burg, in the room occupied by Luther, is shown a black spot on the 
wall, said to have been made by his throwing his inkstand at an 
evil spirit, which he fancied haunted him; this story is, however, 
probably without foundation. 

Pope Adrian VI., who succeeded Leo X. on his coming to the 
Papal chair, published a declaration, wherein, intending to reform 
the church, he says : " Many abominations have been committed for 
several years past in this holy chair, and we shall endeavor that our 
court, from which perhaps all this evil has proceeded, shall undergo 
a speedy reform." The German princes, some of whom were Ro- 
man Catholics, drew up a list to be transmitted to Rome of the 
iniquities of the priesthood and the oppressions of the church sys- 
tem ; and requested the calling of a general council for the purpose 
of adopting measures of reform. Although there are here avowals 
on the part of the papacy itself and its friends in regard to the 
need of reformation, yet the present pope was a foe of Luther's 
doctrine and bent on his destruction. He, however, soon died and 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 259 

was succeeded by Clement VII. of the family de Medicis, when, as 
before, the object of the papacy was to aggrandize rather than to 
reform. 

During the eight years succeeding the diet at Worms, while 
Charles V. was occupied in war with Francis I., of France, the 
opinions of the reformers spread rapidly. Two or three years be- 
fore Luther commenced his reformation, Zuinglius, a priest of 
Zurich, began to preach the doctrines expounded by Wickliffe and 
Huss, and large numbers of the Swiss embraced his opinions; a 
small number, however, opposed them in arms and Zuinglius was 
killed. His friend and fellow reformer, CEcolampadius, died of 
grief. Erasmus, called the most learned man of that age, gave his 
influence warmly in favor of the reformation, as against the abuses 
of the papacy. 

From Germany the opinions of the reformers extended to France, 
tlip Netherlands and England. Charles V., being liberated from 
the French war by the peace of Cambray, summoned a diet at 
Spires to settle religious controversies. The decree of the diet at 
Worms this diet confirmed, and forbade further innovations in re- 
ligion. Against this decree the elector of Saxony with other 
princes of the empire, as well as the deputies of fourteen imperial 
cities protested, and hence in the year 1529, the reformers received 
the name of Protestants. 

At Augsburg the emperor convened another diet whereat Luther 
was not permitted to attend. Melancthon, however, drew up the 
Protestant confession of faith, which was, on their behalf, pre- 
sented to the diet; but all attempts at reconciliation proved fruit- 
less. A more severe decree was now passed against the reformers, 
who on their part entered into the league of Smalcald, in which the 
Protestant states pledged themselves to defend each other against 
all aggressions. They also formed a secret alliance with Henry 
VIII., of England, and with Francis I, of France, whose enmity to 
Charles continued constant. This happened in 1531, from whence 
to the peace of Crespi in 1544, the emperor, occupied in wars with 
the French and Turks and with his expedition to Africa, left the 
Protestants free to promulgate their doctrines.* But the cause of 
the reformation, even in Luther's time, was injured by its friends, 
by means of whom Satan often gives the deepest wounds to the 



* It was at about this time that the Society of the Jesuits originated with Ignatius Loyola, a 
society whicb has been thought to compensate to some small degree to the Catholic church 
for what it had lost in the reformation. 



260 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOQIES, ETC. 

best of causes. On Luther's return to Wittenberg he found among 
his reforming friends many who asserted a baptism of the spirit 
from on high and were, therefore, called Anabaptists. These also 
claiming that only adults should be baptized, rebaptized those that 
had been baptized in their infancy in receiving them into their sect. 
A principal preacher of theirs, named Muncer, having told Luther 
they needed not the Scriptures, that they were guided by the 
spirit, he replied: " I slap your spirit on the snout," a remark we 
must say, from whomsoever proceeding, would indicate rather the 
character of the low pettifogging lawyer than the spirit of the true 
minister of Christ. 

When relieved from his cares in 1544 Charles V leagued with 
the pope for the extirpation of heresy. They assembled a council 
at Trent to the decisions of which the Protestants refused to submit. 
Considering its decrees inconsistent both with reason and Scripture 
they, for their part, preferred the issue of arms. Charles, unpre- 
pared for immediate war, had recourse to intrigue. Maurice, a 
prince of the Saxon family, he won to his side by promising to 
give him the possessions of the elector of Saxony. While the 
emperor and the princes of the league were negotiating Luther 
died in 1546 ; after which the Protestants were subjected to innumer- 
able evils, arising from their different counsels. Maurice treacher- 
ously invaded the territory of his relation, John Frederic, elector 
of Saxony ; defeated his troops and made himself master of almost 
the whole electorate. The news of these conquests soon reached 
the hostile camps and filled the Protestants with terror and their 
opponents with joy. The disheartened confederates having sued 
for peace received conditions, which were so rigorous that they at 
once rejected them. Their army meantime having separated 
Charles seized the opportunity of procuring the submission of the 
princes separately. All yielded excepting the elector of Saxony 
and the landgrave of Hesse. The former returned to his electorate 
which he recovered ; but Charles soon after, having invaded Saxony, 
took him prisoner. The landgrave alone of the confederates, being 
now in arms, Charles used an artifice to obtain possession of his 
person. For this purpose he employed the services of Maurice ; 
and the landgrave through the advice of his treacherous son-in-law 
under a promise of liberty, having submitted himself to the 
emperor, was, contrary to the terms of the agreement, perfidiously 
imprisoned and kept for five years in confinement, though many 
entreaties were in the meantime made for his release by several of 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 261 

the princes of Europe, and even by Maurice, his son-in-law, who 
had acted to him such a treacherous part. 

At a diet held at Augsburg there was presented by the emperor's 
orders a system of doctrine called the " Interim," because it was 
to be binding only until a general council should be convoked. 
Although the principles, before set forth, were made in this a 
little more flexible as to one or two points, yet the system was de- 
cidedly anti-protestant nor yet was it suitable to the Catholics. 

Meantime, the emperor, manifesting a desire to make the impe- 
rial dignity hereditary in his family sought the election to the em- 
pire of his son Philip, in prejudice to his brother Ferdinand, who 
had already been known as king of the Romans; but the electors 
refused to yield to his solicitations. Now Maurice of Saxony, a 
perfect master in the arts of intrigue, who could handle the shrewd- 
est men as he could pawns on a chess board, and who felt himself 
very little restrained by the force of moral principle as to any 
course he might take, set himself to countermine the plans of the 
emperor. To this end he obtained of him command of the impe- 
rial army and was employed first to compel the citizens of Magde- 
burg to submit to the Interim. This object being accomplished he 
delayed under various pretexts to disband the army. He next se- 
cured the support of Henry II, who had just succeeded his father, 
Frances I, as King of France. At the head of 20,000 infantry and 
5,000 cavalry, Maurice now boldly published a manifesto against 
the emperor, stating therein his reasons for his present course. 
Out of health and unsuspicious of danger, Charles was with a few 
soldiers at Innspruck ; and the news of the defection of Maurice 
coming to him, he was confounded, and at once resolved upon 
flight. Unable to endure the rocking of a carriage Charles was 
born over the Alps in a litter. Having arrived safely at Villach in 
Carinthia, he there remained until matters were settled with the 
Protestant princes. Maurice, though hastily moving in pursuit of 
the emperor and failing to come up with him, at length concluded 
that pursuit must be useless and so returned to Innspruck. Mean- 
time negotiations were commenced at Passau, which at length, in 
1552, terminated in a peace, called " the peace of religion." Of 
this agreement the principal stipulation was that the liberties and 
rights of the Protestants in Germany should be preserved. 

Charles V. soon after this resigned his sovereignty of Spain to 
his son Philip; but by the German electors his brother Ferdinand 
was elected emperor. In order to leave peace to his dominions he 



262 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

then made a truce for five years with Henry II. of France, with 
whom he had yet a war, and then passed the two remaining years 
of his life in a monastery in Spain, occupying his time in making 
watches. Thus ended his eventful life, passed in the time of the 
opening of the reformation in Germany, the emperor Charles V. ; 
who was born in the year 1500 and died aged 58 years. 

The diet assembled at Ratisbon, soon after the accession of Ferdi- 
nand, confirmed the " peace of religion." The first council con- 
vened at Trent, to which the " Interim' was provisionally, had 
been removed, ostensibly on account of an epidemic, to Bologna 
and separated, therefrom, in consternation, at the time of the es- 
tablishment of the peace of Passau. In 1562 it was reassembled 
at Trent ; but the great body of the Protestants as well as a portion 
of the Catholics denied its authority. It is memorable as being 
the last called a general council, if we except that convened in our 
time to declare or confirm the infallibility of the pope. 

The contents of the following pages are extracted from different 
writers on the reformation and the principal reformers, which ex- 
hibit these subjects from their points of view, but principally from 
the work " Christ's Second Appearing," which was written, I 
believe, by a Quaker: — 

The contentions concerning the presence of Christ in the Eucha- 
rist were carried on by the reformers for many years, and finally 
terminated in a grand division between the reforming parties, one 
of which claimed Martin Luther as the founder of their church, the 
other John Calvin, a professor of theology at Geneva. Luther -and 
his followers, it is said, rejected the doctrine of the Romish Church, 
with respect to the transubstantiation or change of the bread and 
wine into the real body and blood of Christ; but were, neverthe- 
less, of the opinion that the partakers of the Lord's Supper re- 
ceived along with the bread and wine the real body and blood of 
Christ. " This," says Mosheim, " was in their judgment a mystery 
which they did not pretend to explain." But Dr. Maclaine, the 
translator of Mosheim' s history, says: " Luther was not so modest 
as Dr. Mosheim here represents him. He pretended to explain his 
doctrine of the real presence, absurd and contradictory as it was, 
and uttered much senseless jargon on this subject. " As in red hot 
iron," said he, "two distinct substances, viz., iron, and fire, are 
united, so is the body of Christ joined with the bread in the 
Eucharist." This, Maclaine calls, the " nonsensical doctrine of 
consubstantiation.' ' 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 263 

Carlostadt, who was Luther's colleague and companion, and whose 
doctrine was afterwards confirmed by Zuingle, maintained, " That 
the body and blood of Christ were not really present in the Euchar- 
ist; and that the bread and wine were no more than external signs 
or symbols." This opinion of Zuingle was received by the friends 
of the Reformation in Switzerland, and by a number of its followers 
in Germany. But Mosheim says that " Luther maintained his 
doctrine in relation to this point with the greatest obstinacy ; and 
hence arose in the year 1524, a tedious and vehement controversy 
which terminated at length in a fatal division." To such a degree 
had the contentions among the reformers proceeded concerning the 
Eucharist, that to terminate the controversy, Philip, Landgrave of 
Hesse, invited in the year 1529, Luther and Zuingle, together with 
some of the most eminent doctors who adhered to the respective 
parties of these contending chiefs, to a conference at Marburgh. 
There they disputed during four days and their dissensions still 
remained, " nor could either of the contending parties," says 
Mosheim, " be persuaded to abandon or even modify their opinions 
of the matter." 

By the industry of Calvin the schools and churches of England 
also became the oracles of Calvinism; the Church of Switzerland 
was acknowledged as a sister church, and the system there estab- 
lished was rendered the public rule of faith in England, without any 
change being made in the old Episcopal government. The doctrines 
established in the reformed Church of Scotland also were imported 
from Switzerland, by the celebrated Knox, and were strictly Calvin- 
istic. Thus John Calvin became the founder of the Calvinistic 
reformed churches as distinguished from those founded by Martin 
Luther. 

In the year 1552, Westphal, pastor of Hamburgh, renewed with 
greater violence than ever, this deplorable controversy; he was a 
stubborn defender of the opinions of Luther. He published a 
book against the forementioned act of uniformity, which, says 
Maclaine, "breathes the most virulent spirit of persecution." 
" This," says Mosheim, " engaged Calvin to enter the lists with 
Westphal whom he treated with as little lenity and forbearance as 
the rigid Lutheran had showed to the Helvetic churches. Calvin 
and Westphal had each their zealous defenders; hence the breach 
widened, their spirits were heated, and the flame of controversy 
was kindled anew with violence and fury." These disputes were 



264 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETCi 

augmented and tumults were excited by the fierce conflicts which 
were waged concerning the decrees of God, set in motion by Calvin. 
Augustus, elector of Saxony, and the Duke of Saxe Weimar sum- 
moned the most eminent doctors of both the contending parties to 
meet at Altenburgh, in the year 1568, that it might be seen how far 
a reconciliation was possible. But such were the furious and un- 
christian spirits of these reforming parties as blasted the fruits 
which otherwise might have been expected from this conference. 
The princes now undertook another method, and ordered a Form of 
Doctrine to be composed, in order to terminate the controversies 
which divided the Lutheran Church itself, and so protect that 
Church against doctrinal innovations from the Calvinists. This 
Form was begun in 1569, and was completed by six doctors in 
about seven or eight years after. This form of doctrine, which was 
intended to promote peace, when finished was called the Form of 
Concord, yet the title was found to be incorrect, for it proved to be 
a Form of Discord, and source of new contentions and tumults 
among those who instituted it. This form of concord, which con- 
demned the sentiments of the Calvinists, was received by the greatest 
part of the Lutherans as the great rule of their religion, " and 
hence," says Mosheim, " arises an insuperable obstacle to all 
schemes of reconciliation and concord." 

The Form of Concord, so called, consists of two parts. " In 
the first," says Mosheim, " is contained a system of doctrine drawn 
up according to the fancy of the six doctors," who had received 
their orders from and were under the protection of the princes; 
for these secular princes were clothed with the dignity of ecclesi- 
astical supremacy according to the established principles of the re- 
formers. In the second (part) is exhibited one of the strongest in- 
stances of that tyrannical and persecuting spirit which the Protestants 
complained of in the Church of Rome, even a formal condemnation of 
all who differ from those six doctors. " This condemnation branded 
with the denomination of heretics, and excluded from the com- 
munion of the Church, all Christians of all nations who would re- 
fuse to subscribe to these doctrines. More particularly in Germany 
the terrors of the sword were solicited against these pretended 
heretics, as may be seen in the famous testament of Brentius." 

The Lutherans and Calvinists went hand in hand on the 
continent of Europe in persecuting to the death the Ana- 
baptists and all others whom they in common, considered here- 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 265 

tics. And the Church of England, imbued with the same spirit, 
through its supreme head, and all the branches of its hierarchy, spoke 
with authority and arrogance, as if with the voice of a dragon, 
against all reputed heretics, non-conformists, and papists, and ban- 
ished and burned them in hundreds for a period of two centuries : 
so that it could be said that they, that is the ruling powers, caused 
as many as would not conform to all the rules and rites of their es- 
tablished religion to be killed. 

However abominable the doctrine of compulsion is, and however 
corrupt the source from which it flows, the Protestant Reformers re- 
tained it in its full extent. This is manifest from their giving up 
people of different religious opinions from their own to be oppressed 
and punished by the civil rulers. Robinson very justly says : " Do- 
minion over conscience is antichrist anywhere. At Rome Antichrist 
is of age, a sovereign, and wears a crown ; at the meanest meeting- 
house, if the same kind of tyranny be, Antichrist is a beggar's baby at 
the breast ; but as conscience everywhere is a throne of God, so a 
usurper of his throne is Antichrist anywhere." * Whatever deranges 
the equality of Christians is the spirit of Antichrist. Call it truth or 
piety or virtue, or whatever we may, the whole is in direct opposition 
to the Gospel, so long as that persecuting spirit remains connected 
with it. 

It was but a short time after the Reformation began that the 
cruel work of persecution was commenced by the Reformers, in or- 
der to bow down every effort on the side of freedom, and to extirpate 
every heretic who dared to oppose the corrupt and ambitious plans 
of the Reformers. And according to the historians of his time, no 
one was more fit to set the example of a cruel persecutor than Mar- 
tin Luther. His most favorable historian, Mosheim, himself of the 
Lutheran faith, in speaking of the bitterness and animosity of the 
first Reformers, says : "Luther himself appears at the head of this 
sanguine tribe, whom he far surpasses in invectives and abuse, treating 
his adversaries with the most brutal asperity,and sparing neither rank 
nor condition." He considered everything as subordinate to his own 
opinions under the name of truth, and poured forth, against such as 
disappointed him in this particular, a torrent of invectives, mingled 
with contempt.f He fell out with Carlostadt, one of his co-Re- 
formers, and not only had him banished from Wittenberg, but fol- 
lowed him from place to place, having him frequently expelled, lb 1 
could not agree with Calvin nor with Zuingle, who as himself, were 
supported by powerful patrons, and he was immensely angry with 



* Ecclesiastical Researches, p. 173. t Hist. Charles V. Book VIII. 



266 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the Baptists, who had none. He had himself tanght the doctrine of 
immersion, but he could not bear the article of Reforming without 
him. This exasperated him to the last degree ; he b ecame their 
bitter enemy; and notwithstanding all he had previously said in 
favor of immersion, he persecuted them under the name of rebaptizers 
or Anabaptists. There was a Thomas Muncer, who had been a minister 
at several places, being persecuted through the influence of Luther 
and compelled to seek refuge where he could. There were Nicholas 
Stork, Mark Stubner, Martin Cellarius, and others against all of 
whom Luther set himself. When he heard of them settling any- 
where he officiously played the part of a universal bishop, and wrote 
to princes and senates to expel such dangerous men. " It is," says 
Robinson, "very truly said by Cardinal Housius, that Luther did 
not intend to make all men as free as himself ; he had not foreseen 
that other men would apply the same reasoning to his tyranny over 
conscience which he had so successfully applied to that of the Pope, 
and, therefore, he dethroned him that he might set up himself." * 
His colleague Carlostadt found this to his sorrow. On Luther's plan 
there was no probability of freedom coming to the people. It was 
only designed to free the priests from obedience to the Pope, and to 
enable them to tyrannize over the people in the name of the Civil 
Magistrate. Muncer saw this fallacy, and remonstrated against it ; 
and this was the crime for which he was punished by Luther with 
an unpardonable rigor, and which the followers of Luther have 
never forgiven to this day. Observe the spirit of the followers of 
Luther ; Muncer, say they, was a man well skilled in the knowledge 
of the Scriptures before the devil inspired him ; but then he had 
the arrogance to preach not only against the Pope, but against Dr. 
Martin Luther himself. As if Martin the Saxon had any better 
patent for infallibility than Leo the Romish Pope. 

But the principal occasion Luther took to give vent to his perse- 
cuting spirit was that of the insurrection of the peasants called the 
" Rustic War." When these long deluded and oppressed creatures 
sighed for religious and civil liberty the clergy of all orders agreed 
to reproach them for their depravity, and to scandalize the first of 
all human blessings with the odious name of carnal liberty. Muncer 
drew up for the peasants a memorial or manifesto, setting forth their 
grievances, which they presented to their lords and dispersed all 
over Germany. Luther wrote four treatises on the subject. The 
first was an answer to the manifesto, in which, though he told them 
that the princes were cruel oppressors who had no excuse for their 



* Eccles. Hist. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMKD CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 267 

injustice and deserved to be dethroned by God, yet that it was sedi- 
tion in the oppressed to resist them. His advice to them was that 
they should not resist evil, but when they were smitten on one 
cheek they should turn the other also ; that this was the doctrine of 
Christ, and such doctors as taught otherwise were worse than Turks 
and inspired by the devil. But this same Luther, who under the 
mask of a minister of Christ exhorted the oppressed jueasants not to 
resist evil, wrote again to the princes and endeavored to convince 
them that it was their duty to kill and exterminate those same pea- 
sants as they would mad dogs.* The princes set about the work 
agreeably to the instructions of this double-faced Reformer, and 
thousands fell victims to the ferocious and more than savage massa- 
cres in which both Protestants and Papists became united, and in 
which the peasants without distinction became involved in one com- 
mon fate of fire and sword, and suffered with the utmost barbarity. 
That Luther's persecuting rage was mainly directed against those 
whom he condemned in his writings under the name of Anabaptists, 
and who unjustly suffered without resistance, appears from what 
follows : " It is to be observed," says Mosheim, " that the. leaders of 
that sect had fallen into that erroneous and chimerical notion that 
the new Kingdom of Christ, which they expected, was to be exempt 
from every kind of vice, and from the smallest degree of corruption, 
and so they were not pleased with the plan of Reformation proposed 
by Luther." This was enough to kindle the flame of resentment in 
the breast of Luther, who by taking the Church as it was under the 
reign of the Papacy, included whole parishes and kingdoms, with all 
the inhabitants of every description, in the Church. That the most 
cruel resentment was kindled in the breast of Luther against these 
people is evident from his famous Augsburgh confession, each article 
of which begins with Docent, that is, they teach, and ends with domi- 
nant, that is, they condemn, and many of them with damnant Ana- 
baptistas, they condemn the Anabaptists. We may enquire what 
right Luther, who had just before been condemned by the Pope, had 
to call in question the sentiments of others and presumptuously 
condemn those who conscientiously differed from him in their religi- 
ous opinions, as if Dr. Martin Luther had ail power in heaven and 
in earth. It was a horrid crime in Luther's eyes for any one to ex- 
pect a pure and unspotted Church, and for that reason to be dis- 
satisfied with his plans of reformation. 

Thus, after the plan of the Catholic establishment we hero find 
a complete fusion of the Church with the world by Luther. If a 



* Consult Eccles. Hist., Cents. XVI., chap. II. Also " Christ's Second Appearing. 



238 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

corrupt and tyrannical Church had been the object of the pursuit of 
these reputed heretics, both they and their ancestors found one to 
their sorrow long enough before Luther rose up to establish his by 
the sword of earthly princes. The fact is, that the reputed heretics 
had, in every age, witnessed a good confession against Catholic Or- 
thodoxy by cheerfully sacrificing all earthly comforts and even their 
lives in support of their faith concerning a pure Church, and the 
same undaunted spirit continued to witness against the Protestant 
Reformers, and gave them a fair opportunity to prove that they 
were actuated by the same spirit, and exercised all the persecuting 
power of the first beast. " In almost all the countries of Europe," 
says Mosheim, u an unspeakable number of those unhappy wretches 
preferred death in its worst forms to a retraction of their errors ; 
neither the view of the flames that were kindled to consume them, 
nor the ignominies of the gibbet, nor the terrors of the sword, could 
shake their invincible but ill-placed constancy, or make them abandon 
tenets which appeared to them dearer than life and all its enjoy- 
ments." But this historian soon after adds: "It is true, indeed, 
that many Anabaptists suffered death because they were judged 
incurable heretics ; for in this century, the error of limiting the ad- 
ministration of baptism to adult persons only, and the practice of 
re-baptizing such as had received that sacrament in a state of infancy 
were looked upon as most flagitious and intolerable heresies." Now 
what greater cruelties did ever the Church of Rome practice than to 
burn to death such as they judged to be incurable heretics when no 
other charge could be brought against them? But Mosheim, that 
Lutheran ecclesiastic, is pleased to call their faith concerning a pure 
Church an erroneous and chimerical notion, and their sentiments 
errors, and their constancy, with which they faced death in its worst 
forms, ill-placed. See Ephes. V, 27 ; Rev. XXI, 27. In the same 
manner the Popish historian, Thuanus, speaks of the Waldenses, 
" that they were rather slain, put to flight, spoiled everywhere of 
their goods and dignities, and dispersed here and there, than that, 
convinced of their error, they repented." * It is acknowledged by 
their enemies that many of those Anabaptists were of the most up- 
right intentions, and sincere piety, and that the innocent, with those 
who were accounted guilty, suffered with undistinguishing cruelty. 
But it is remarkable that all those undistinguishing cruelties, carried 
on under the pretence of suppressing heresy or sedition, were prac- 
tised in the same persecuting spirit, and accompanied with like 
misrepresentations and slanderous accusations as were used by the 



* Newton's Dissertations on Prophecy, Di=$. XXIV. 



PROTESTANT-REFOIIMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 269 

ancient Pagans in their persecutions of the primitive Christians. 
And besides those undistinguishing cruelties exercised at the instiga- 
tion of Luther, what fruits do we see his Reformation produced in 
his own heart and life ? After he had practised it for twenty years 
it did not save him from his outbreaking sins, but directly to the 
contrary. " He grew daily more peevish, more irascible, and more 
impatient of contradiction." So says Dr. Robertson. His whole 
life of ambition and cruelty well comports with the character which 
he gives of himself in his last will ; and whether any temporal Mon- 
arch or Pope ever discovered the feelings of his own ambition more 
than Luther did, may be judged from what follows : " I am known," 
says this Reforming monk, u in heaven, in earth, and in hell, and 
possess consequence sufficient for this demand that my single tes- 
timony be believed, seeing that God, of his Fatherly compassion, 
hath intrusted to me, though a reprobate man and a miserable sinner, 
the Gospel of his Son, and hath granted that I should be so true and 
faithful in it, that many in the world have received it from me as a 
doctor of the truth, while they contemn, with detestation, the bans 
of the Pope, of Caesar, of Kings, of Princes, and of priests, yea of all 
devils ! ! ! Why then may it not suffice for this disposal of a small 
estate, if the testimony of my hand be affixed, and it can be said Dr. 
Martin Luther, God's Notary and Witness of his Gospel, wrote these 
things." 

Such is a faithful representation of the character of Luther, taken 
from himself and from the most faithful historians of his times ; and 
it appears to us, though we have not the least desire, nor are we at 
all interested to lay upon him, or upon any other of the Reformers, 
a greater burden of iniquity than their memory is worthy to bear, 
that he who says that God has entrusted to him his Gospel, while 
much of his life's conduct and his final testimony declare him to 
have been a reprobate was either a truly penitent man or a hypo- 
crite. Some think his nature to have been like that of his contem- 
porary, Henry VIII; their fundamental characters were somewhat 
alike, but Henry, as a monster of cruelty, was incomparable. 

The same persecuting spirit which actuated Luther was manifested 
also in John Calvin. At Geneva he acted the part of a universal 
bishop, presiding in the assembly of the clergy and in the consistory, 
and punished heretics of all kinds, who had the confidence to object 
against his ecclesiastical system of tyranny, with unremitting rigor. 
There was one Gruet, who was charged with denying " the divinity 
of the Christian religion," that is, the religion then established at 
Geneva "and the immortality of the soul." He also called Calvin 
the "new Pope" and became guilty of other like impieties, for 



270 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

which he was brought before the civil tribunal in the year 1550 and 
was condemned to death. There were others who could not receive 
his doctrine of eternal and absolute decrees. " These adversaries," 
says Mosheim, " felt by a disagreeable experience the warmth and 
violence of his haughty temper, and that impatience of contradiction 
which arose from an over-zealous concern for his honor, or rather for 
his unrivalled supremacy." u He would not suffer them to remain at 
Geneva, na} r , in the heat of the controversy, being carried away by 
the impetuosity of his passions, he accused them of crimes from which 
they have been fully absolved by the impartial judgment of unpre- 
judiced posterity." Among the victims of Calvin's unlimited power 
and excessive -zeal we may reckon Castilio, master of the public 
school at Geneva. He was deposed from his office in the year 1554, 
and banished. A like fate happened to Bolsec, a professor of medi- 
cine, whose favorable opinions of the Protestant religion first brought 
him to Geneva ; but finding himself mistaken, he had the assurance, 
in the year 1551, to raise his voice in the full congregation against 
absolute and unconditional decrees , for which he was imprisoned, 
and soon after banished. 

But none appears to have given Calvin more trouble than did 
Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician, who appeared in the year 1530, 
and by his abilities, both natural and acquired, had obtained the 
patronage of many persons of authority in France, Germany, and 
Italy. Notwithstanding these advantages, finding him in his power, 
Calvin had him imprisoned, and an accusation of blasphemy brought 
against him by the Council. 

Servetus was a man of a free and liberal turn of mind, " he was," 
says Robinson, " an original genius, of a manly spirit, bold in his in- 
quiries after truth, and generous as the day in communicating his 
opinions, not doubting that he had as much right to investigate the 
doctrine of the Trinity as others had that of Transubstantiation." 

In the year 1531-2, he published two books, both intended to dis- 
prove the doctrine of the Trinity ; and as they denied the popular 
notions of persons in God, and affirmed that Jesus was a man, th.Qj 
procured for him a great number of enemies and also many friends. 
He had freely communicated his opinions to (Ecolampadius and Bucer. 
Both these reforming divines had the character of mildness ; but 
CEcolampadius thought anger just in this case, and Bucer declared 
from the pulpit that Servetus deserved to be torn in pieces, and have 
his bowels torn out of him. All the artillery of the orthodox was 
now directed against this schismatical Spaniard, blasphemous heretic, 
for so they, whom the greater part of Europe then called heretics, 
had the inconsistency to denominate Servetus. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 271 

Calvin having published his favorite production entitled " Chris- 
tian Institutes," Servetus read this book, and finding in it a great 
number of mistakes and errors he took the liberty to inform the au- 
thor of them. This so irritated Calvin that he never forgave him, 
and instead of profiting by the advice, he wrote to his friends Viret 
and Farel " that if ever this heretic should fall into his hands it 
would cost him his life." And so it finally happened. Calvin had 
an admirer at Geneva whose name was Trie : this Trie had a relative 
at Lyons, a Papist, whose name was Arney, who incessantly exhorted 
his cousin to return to the bosom of the Church. Calvin dictated 
letters in the name of William Trie who directed them to Arney, and 
the latter carried them to Ory the Inquisitor. To unfold more fully 
Calvin's private character we shall here give the contents of this 
letter to Trie. " I thank God that vices are better corrected here 
than among all of your officials ; with you they support a heretic 
who deserves to be burned wherever he is found. When I mention 
to you a heretic, I mention one who shall be condemned by the Pap- 
ists as well as by the Protestants ; at least he deserves to be so. For 
although we differ in opinion about many things, we are still agreed 
that there are three persons in the essence of God. You may cruelly 
burn us, but behold, him who shall call Jesus Christ an idol, who shall 
destroy all the foundations of faith, who gathers together all the 
dreams of ancient heretics, who shall even condemn the baptism of 
little children, calling it a diabolical invention ; and he shall have 
the vogue amongst you, and be supported as if he had committed no 
fault. Where, pray, is the zeal you pretend to ? And where is the 
wisdom of this fine hierarchy you magnify so much ? " By this 
means Servetus was seized in the year 1553 and cast into prison ; 
but in four days after he managed to make his escape, and could no- 
where be found. The prosecution was carried on in his absence, and 
he was condemned to be burned alive in a slow fire ; and seeing his 
person could not be found, the sentence was executed upon his effigy. 
" The effigy of Servetus was placed in a cart with five bales of his 
books, and all were burned together for the glory of God and the 
safety of the Church."* Four months after this Servetus was discov- 
ered, while waiting for a boat to cross the lake of Geneva, on his 
way to Zurich. Calvin received intelligence and prevailed on the 
chief magistrate to arrest and imprison him, although it was on the 
first day of the week when, by the laws of Geneva, no person could 
be arrested except for a capital crime. But Calvin urged that Ser- 
vetus was a heretic and that heresy was a capital crime. To prison 



Eccles. Researches. 



272 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

he was committed and on the same day he was tried in court. As 
it was necessary for some one to prosecute Servetus, Calvin employed 
one of his own family, Nicholas de la Fontaine, who, some say, had 
been a cook, others a valet, but whatever he had been he was now a 
preacher. Short as the notice had been Lafontaine was ready pre- 
pared, and an humble request was presented to the judges in which 
Servetus was accused of uttering blasphemies against God, of infect- 
ing the world with heresies and of condemning the doctrine preached 
at Geneva. Servetus presented a petition to the magistrate and 
council. The petition was rejected ; the attorney-general said that 
the court ought not to grant the petitioner an advocate, because he 
himself was thoroughly skilled in the art of telling lies. Such was 
his deplorable situation. " Far from his own country, fallen into the 
hands of cruel strangers, all under the power of Calvin, his avowed 
enemy, who bore him a mortal hatred ; stript of all his property, con- 
fined in a dark prison, and neglected till he was almost eaten with 
vermin ; denied an advocate, and loaded with every indignity his 
enemies could invent. The last act of this melancholy tragedy was 
performed at Geneva on October 27, 1553. Calvin had drawn up 
the process against Servetus ; the magistrates and council had pro- 
nounced sentence against him that he should be burnt alive ; and on 
this day, with many brutal circumstances, the sentence was executed 
to the encouragement of Catholic cruelty, to the scandal of the pre- 
tended Reformation, to the offence of all just men, and to the ever- 
lasting disgrace of those ecclesiastical tyrants who were the instru- 
ments of such a wild and barbarous deed."* " Many," adds Robin- 
son, " have pretended to apologize for Calvin, and what are his 
nostrums, which end in tyranny and murder, that the great voice of 
nature should be drowned in a din of vain babbling about him." 
" Servetus was not a subject of the Republic of Geneva ; he 
had committed no offence against the laws of the state ; he was 
passing peaceably on the road which lay through the city ; he was 
not a member of any Reformed Church ; he was a useful and honor- 
able member of society ; he was a man of unimpeached morality ; 
he was then the admiration of numbers of good judges who afterwards 
pleaded his cause." Calvin's heart never relented at the recollection 
of that bloody deed. On the contrary, he justified it by publishing, 
after the execution, a book entitled "A faithful account of the errors of 
Michael Servetus." In this it is attempted to be proved that heretics 
ought to be restrained by the sword. Castalio, or Socinus, confuted 
this book. Beza answered justifying the doctrine of putting heretics 



* Eccles. Researches. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 273 

to death. Several endeavored to sanctify the deed by Scriptural 
texts and godly words ; and many have attempted to follow their 
example in doing alike. Some of them go so far as to attribute the 
burning of Servetus to a special judgment of God. Can the nicest 
critic discern the difference between this and the spirit and style of 
the Papal Inquisition ? Is it not all the unrestrained outworking of 
the evil principle in man as we often had occasion to remark from 
examples before ? 

" The execution of this man," says Robinson, " occasioned a great 
many excellent and unanswerable treatises against persecution. Beza 
was offended because the authors said that he had published a book 
to justify the murder of heretics; whereas he had only written one 
to prove that they ought to be put to death. They called him a 
bloody man for exhorting magistrates to put men to death for relig- 
ion ; he retorted he had wished, and continued to wish, that the 
magistrates would serve them so." The apologists urged the exam- 
ple of Melancthonin proof of the justice of putting Servetus to death. 
" Melancthon himself," say they, " the most moderate and the mild- 
est of all the Reformers, approves what has been done at Geneva." 
We may remark, if such were the spirit of the mildest of the Reform- 
ers, what kind of men must those have been, whom their most 
favorable historians acknowledged to be men of violent and haughty 
temper ? Mosheim says : " The Anabaptists and those who denied 
the divinity of Christ, and a Trinity of persons in the Godhead were 
objects of common aversion, a ainst whom the zeal, vigilance, and 
severity of Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were united, and in 
opposing whose settlement and progress those three communions, 
forgetting their mutual dissensions, joined their most rigorous coun- 
cils and endeavors." This then was the practice of the Reformers, 
Lutherans, and Calvinists, to join hand in hand with the Papists, in 
shedding the blood of reputed heretics ; and who of us, therefore, 
can pretend to say that these persecuting Protestant Reformers were 
not indisputably one in spirit, nature, and disposition with the priest- 
hood of the mother Church of Rome? We cannot advance a plea 
in their behalf, as true Christians. The Protestant Reformers could 
encourage persecution and by their example, their principles and 
practice unite with the Papists in shedding innocent blood. Then, 
if we claim innocency and martyrdom for those who were tortured 
and put to death by Papal Inquisition, how can we rid ourselves of 
the idea that those who were the subjects of Protestant and Papal 
persecution combined were other than innocent men and martyrs? 

The following is an extract written with Calvin's own hand to 
the Marquis de Poet, Hi^h Chamberlain to the King of Navarre: 

18 



274 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

" Sept. 30th, 1561. " Honor, glory and riches shall be the reward of 
your pains ; but above all do not fail to rid the country of these 
zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such 
monsters should be exterminated as I have exterminated Michael 
Serve tus the Spaniard." The persecuting spirit of Calvin was not 
confined to Switzerland, but extended far and wide beyond that 
country. Robinson says : " He and other foreign divines had many 
tools in Poland, particularly Prasnicius, a violent orthodox clergyman. 
With this man, and through him with the nobility, gentry and clergy, 
Calvin and Beza corresponded : and many divines of Germany and 
Switzerland, and even the synod of Geneva, sent letters and tracts 
into Poland, all justifying the murders of Gentilis and Servetus, and 
the necessity of employing the secular. power to rid the world of such 
monsters as denied the Trinity and infant baptism. k4 The advice 
given by the consistory of Geneva to prince Hadzivil is a most ig- 
norant and impious attack on the liberties and lives of innocent men. 
They beg his highness, as the first in piety and dignity, to use his 
influence with the nobility of Poland to engage the Anti-trinitarians 
as they would Tartars and Muscovites." The point of this argu- 
ment will be better understood if it be remembered that the Poles 
always regarded the Muscovites or Russians as their greatest enemies. 
In Poland, also, the Papists, Lutherans, and Calvinists united in one 
bond of cruelty to crush those who, for the sake of peace, had fled 
thither from the iron arm of persecution in other places. We here 
present to our readers two extracts of letters written by Andrew 
Dudith, of Poland, who had been excommunicated from the Church 
of Rome for heresy. His sentiments favored the Unitarian Baptists, 
a species of popular heretics, who had fled into Poland in order to 
enjoy that religious liberty which was denied them in other places. 
Dudith corresponded with many of the most noted reformers, and 
these extracts clearly discover the spirit by which they were actuated, 
and may serve to show the light in which that discerning man viewed 
the conduct of these persecuting Protestants. 

" Tell me, my learned friend," says he to Wolf, " now that the 
Calvinists have burned Servetus, and beheaded Gentilis, and mur- 
dered many others ; having banished Bernard Ochim, with his wife 
and children, from your city in the depths of a sharp winter ; now 
that the Lutherans have expelled Lasco with the congregation of 
foreigners that came out of England with him, in an exceedingly 
rigorous season of the year, having done a great many such exploits 
all contrary to the genius of Christianity ; now, I ask, how shall we 
meet the Papists ? With what face can we tax them with cruelty ? 
How dare we say our weapons are not carnal ■? How can we any 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 275 

longer let both grow together until the harvest ? Let us cease to 
boast that faith cannot be compelled, and the conscience ought to 
be free." " You contend," says he to Beza, "that Scripture is a 
perfect rule of faith and practice. But }^ou are all divided about 
the sense of Scripture, and you have not settled who shall be judge. 
You say one thing, Stancarus another. You quote Scripture, he 
quotes Scripture. You reason, he reasons. You require me to 
believe you. I respect you, but why should I trust you rather than 
Stancarus ? You say he is a heretic, but the Papists say you are 
both heretics. Shall I believe them? They quote historians and 
fathers, so do you. To whom do you address yourselves ? Where 
is the judge ? You say the spirits of the prophets are subject to the 
prophets ; but you say I am no prophet, and I say you are not one. 
Who is to be judge ? I love liberty as well as you. You have 
broken your yoke, allow me to break mine. Having freed your- 
selves from the tyranny of popish prelates, why do you turn eccle- 
siastical tyrants yourselves, and treat others with barbarity and 
cruelty for only doing what you set them an example to do ? You 
contend that your lay hearers, the magistrates, and not you, are to 
be blamed, for it is they who banish and burn for heresy. I know 
you make this excuse; but tell me, have }^ou not instilled such prin- 
ciples into their ears ? Have they done an}^ thing more than put in 
practice the doctrine that you taught them? Have you not told them 
how glorious it was to defend the faith? Have jou not been the 
constant panegyrists of such princes as have depopulated whole dis- 
tricts for heresy ? Do you not daily teach that they who appeal from 
your confessions to Scripture ought to be punished by the secular 
power ? It is impossible for you to deny this. Does not all the 
world know that you are a set of demagogues, or, to speak more 
mildly, a sort of tribunes, and that the magistrates do nothing but 
exhibit in public what you teach them in private ? You try to justi- 
fy the banishment of Ochim and the execution of others, and you 
seem to wish that Poland would follow your example. God forbid ! 
When you talk of your Augsburgh confession and your Helvetic 
creed, and your unanimity, and your fundamental truths, I keep 
thinking of the sixth commandment, " Thou shalt not kill." 

If matters of fact can establish anything, then it is certain that 
the two principal pillars of the Reformation, Luther and Calvin, as 
well as their confederate reformers, were influenced by the same 
spirit of cruelty and injustice which had influenced the hierarchy of 
their mother Church and the tyrants of every age, from Diotrephe9 
and the Alexandrian priesthood down to the same Luther and Calvin. 



276 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

The Reformation in England begun with Henry VIII., who was 
contemporary with Luther. He came to the throne on the death 
of his father Henry VII., in 1509, and died in 1547, Luther having 
died the year before. He was the second English dynast of the 
house of Tudor, and his long reign of 38 years has been called " a 
continual butchery of human beings." His historian says that " in 
his reign 72,000 persons suffered death for theft and robbery alone ; 
and the number of executions, which took place on account of 
religion, was reckoned at six for every day of this long reign." * 

Henry's first step on coming to the throne was to secure the 
alliance of Spain by his marriage with Catherine of Arragon, the 
widow of his brother Arthur. Wickliffe's books having been pretty 
extensively circulated and read before this time his opinions were 
by many secretly cherished. The church with great severity had 
endeavored to check the new doctrines ; and Henry in the year 1521 
(the same year in which Luther was excommunicated by the pope) 
produced his " Defense of the Seven Sacraments." The pope in 
appreciation of this bestowed upon Henry the title of " Defender 
of the Faith," a title which the British sovereigns apply to them- 
selves till this time, although acting independently of the church 
which conferred it and at variance with some of the doctrines for 
the defense of which it was given. This " defense " coming into 
Luther's hands and he finding himself greatly vituperated therein, 
answered by another applying terms equally coarse to Henry. The 
partisans of Henry responded in language in which the lowest depth 
of scurrility was reached. The motive which induced Henry to 
publish this treatise seems undoubtedly to have been that he wished 
to have the pope and all the world know that he himself was a true 
Catholic, a son of the church whose doctrines he intended by all 
means to defend. He, as Luther, never gave it to be understood 
that he separated from the Roman Catholic Church, but only from 
that church as it considered the pope as its supreme head. To this 
church in its most extreme doctrines he adhered all his life and 
punished those who dissented from it, whether they belonged to the 
class of the German reformers or to any other class of " dissenters." 
Henry looked upon all as heretics who did not conform to his 
peculiar views, and promptly punished them as such. One Dr. 
Barnes, a professed Lutheran, and two other Protestants named 
Gerard and Jerome, were carried to the place of execution on three 



* Hume Hist. Henry VH1. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 277 

hurdles; and along with them there was placed on each hurdle a 
Catholic, who was, at the same time, executed for his religion. 
The names of the Catholics were Abel, Featherston and Powell; 
and they declared that the most grievous part of their punishment 
was their being coupled to such heretical miscreants as suffered with 
them. Here is perceived the absurdity of such religion as is pro- 
fessed by some people, a religion which may consist in a system of 
ideas they have conjured up in their mind concerning God, etc. 
But opinions change and the creed of one age or nation may be 
blasphemous and criminal in another. True religion consists more 
particularly in the being good and doing good one's self; in the 
doing to others as we would have others do to us, were our positions 
in relation to each other altered ; in the living the life of active o-od- 
liness and developing all the graces of the true Christian character 
while worshiping God, who is a spirit, in spirit and in truth. 

But there is no doubt that many of those executions, so-called, 
for religion, under Henry VIII and other tyrants, were nothing but 
the most atrocious and cold-blooded murders, the persons being 
sacrificed for a purpose, namely, for the bringing about of confor- 
mity in the general mind and action with certain systems, religious 
or religio-political, which were newly introduced, or long existing. 
A part of my meaning here is that if there were any crime in the 
case, such for example as heresy for which so many suffered death 
by fire, some of those who did suffer so ignominiously for that 
alleged crime should not have suffered for it, had they been given 
time and opportunity to recant. But some there were undoubtedly 
who were hurried into carts and hurdles and taken to the place of 
execution and there sacrificed, simply because some tyrant in au- 
thority had ordered it so, or some confidant of his advised him that 
it should be so, thus to produce a widespread effect. Nor should 
there likely be a person in the crowd or community who would dare 
to raise his voice against the murder, lest, for his intrepidity, a like 
punishment might soon happen to himself. 

" If we inquire from what articles of faith above or against our 
reason the Reformers have enfranchised their followers (for such 
enfranchisement is a benefit so far as it is compatible with truth and 
piety), we shall rather be surprised at their timidity than at their 
freedom. With the Jews they adopted the belief and defence of all 
the Hebrew Scriptures with all their prodigies apparent or real, from 



278 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

the garden of Eden to the visions of the prophet Daniel ; and they 
were bound like the Catholics to justify against the Jews the aboli- 
tion of a divine law. In the doctrines of the Trinity and the In- 
carnation the Reformers were severely orthodox ; they freely adopted 
the theoloow of the four or six first councils : and with the Athana- 
sian creed they pronounced the eternal damnation of all who did 
not believe the Catholic faith. Transubstantiation or the change of 
the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that 
defies, not only the powers of argument but pleasantry; but instead 
of consulting the evidence of their senses, of their sight, their feel- 
ing and their taste, the first Reformers were entangled in their own 
scruples, and awed by the words in which Jesus is represented to 
have instituted the Sacrament. But the loss of any mysterious 
doctrine of the Mother Church which the Reformers saw fit to dis- 
pense with was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of 
original sin, redemption, faith, grace and predestination which they 
strained from the Epistles of St. Paul. These subtle questions had, 
undoubtedly, been prepared by the Fathers and school-men ; but 
their final improvement and popular use are due to the first Reformers, 
who enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation. 
Thus far the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Pro- 
testants ; and many a sober Christian," says Gibbon, " would prefer 
to admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and cajDricious 
tyrant. The patriot Reformers,"' the same author adds, " were ambi- 
tious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They 
imposed with equal rigor their creeds and confessions ; they asserted 
the right of the magistrates to punish heretics with death. The 
pious or personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus, the 
guilt of his own rebellion ; and the flames of Smithfield in which he 
was afterwards consumed had been kindled for the Anabaptists by 
the zeal of Cranmer. The nature of the tiger was the same, but he ivas 
gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs.'' * 

Henry VIII. , being desirous of cementing a union with the German 
Reformers, sent, in 1538, Christopher Mount to a congress which 
they held at Brunswick ; but this ambassador made but little pro- 
gress in his negotiation. The princes wished to know what were the 
articles in their confession which Henry disliked ; and they sent 
new ambassadors to him who had orders both to negotiate and to 
dispute. They endeavored to convince Henry that he was guilty of 
a mistake in administering the Eucharist in one kind only, in allow- 
ing privates masses, and in requiring the celibacy of the clergy. 



* Milman's Gibbon's Rome, ch. LIV. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 279 

Henry would not by any means acknowledge any error in these par- 
ticulars ; and was highly displeased that they should dare to pre- 
scribe rules to so great a monarch and theologian as he. He found 
arguments and syllogisms enough to defend his side of the question 
and he dismissed the ambassadors without coming to any conclusion. 
Jealous also that his own subjects should become so well versed in 
theology as to question his tenets, he used great precaution in pub- 
lishing the translation of the Scriptures which was finished for him 
this year. He would only allow a copy of it to be deposited in some 
parish churches, where it was fixed by a chain ; and he took care to 
inform the people, by proclamation, " that this indulgence was not 
the effect of his duty but of his goodness and liberality to them, 
who, therefore, should use it moderately for the increase of virtue, 
not of strife ; and he ordered that no one should read the Bible 
aloud so as to disturb the priest while he said mass nor presume to 
expound the doubtful places without advice from the learned." In 
these measures it is seen the Church of England, with its supreme 
head, still held a middle ground between the Papists and the Pro- 
testants. 

In the next year, 1539, he had the parliament to pass the bill of 
the Six Articles, or the bloody bill as it is justly termed by the Pro- 
testants. In this law the doctrine of the " real presence " was estab- 
lished, the communion in one kind, the perpetual obligation of vows 
of chastity, the utility of private masses, the celibacy of the clergy, 
and the necessity of auricular confession. The denial of the first 
article, that with regard to the " real presence," subjected the person 
to death by fire, and to the same forfeiture as in the cases of treason, 
and admitted not the privilege of abjuring; an unheard-of severity, 
says Hume, and unknown to the Inquisition itself. The denial of 
any of the other five articles, even though recanted, was punishable 
by the forfeiture of goods and chattels, and imprisonment during 
the king's pleasure ; an obstinate adherence to error or a relapse 
was adjudged to be felony, punishable with death. The marriage of 
priests was subjected to the same punishment. Their commerce 
with women was, on the first offence, forfeiture and imprisonment : 
on the second death. The abstaining from confession and from 
receiving the Eucharist at the appointed times subjected the person 
to fine and imprisonment during the king's pleasure; and if the 
criminal persevered after conviction, he was punishable with death 
and forfeiture as in cases of felony. Commissioners were to be 
appointed b}^ the king for inquiring into these heresies and irregular 
practices, and the criminals were to be tried by a jury. By this law 
the king laid his oppressive hand upon both Protestants and Papists ; 



280 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and another law, passed by the same parliament, gave to the king's 
Proclamation the same force as to a civil statute, thus making him 
as absolute a despot as ever despot was. 

In 1546 the king, who had been hitherto careful to keep the 
mass in Latin, was at last prevailed on, principally by Cranmer, to 
permit that the Litany, a considerable part of the service, should be 
celebrated in English ; and by this innovation he excited anew the 
hopes of the Reformers who had been somewhat discouraged by the 
severe law of the Six Articles. One petition of the new Litany was 
a prayer " to save us from the tyranny of the bishop of Rome and 
from all his detestable enormities." Cranmer now employed his 
credit to draw Henry into farther innovations, and he took 
advantage of the absence of Gardiner, a prelate who was favorably 
disposed towards the old regime, and was now on embassy to the 
emperor Charles V. ; but Gardiner having written to the king that 
if he carried his opposition against the Romish religion to greater 
extremities Charles threatened to break off all commerce with him, 
the success of Cranmer's projects was for some time retarded. 

Having been many years married to Catherine of Arragon, who 
is said to have been an excellent woman, Henry now wished to marry 
Anna Boleyn, a lady of his court. He, therefore, affected to think 
his marriage with Catherine illegal, because she was his brother's 
widow, and so began to support the cause of the Catholics that he 
might thereby win the favor of the pope, who he hoped might thus 
grant him a divorce. But having applied therefor to the pope his 
application was deferred to be acted upon from time to time. At 
length Clement VII, at the instance of Charles V, Catherine's 
nephew, summoned Henry to appear at Rome; a summons which 
the monarch resented as an insult. Henry, thereupon, proposed 
to the universities of Europe the question as to whether his mar- 
riage with Catharine had been valid or invalid, according to the 
Canon law. From several of these he received answers favorable 
to his purpose and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge with 
the convocations of Canterbury and York finally enlisted themselves 
on his side, pronouncing the king's marriage " invalid, irregular, 
and contrary to the Word of God which no human power has au- 
thority to dispute." Thomas Cranmer, a fellow of the university 
of Cambridge, was at this time in great repute for his breadth and 
depth of theological and canonical learning. Henry succeeded 
in engaging him on his side, so that he exerted his influence at this 

CO© ' 

time in favor of the universities granting the divorce, but after- 
wards of their granting of the question of the king's spiritual su- 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 281 

preniacy over the Church of England. As an acknowledgment for 
his services if not of his fitness for the position Henry on his as- 
sumption of the .supremacy made Cranmer archbishop of Canter- 
bury. 

Cardinal Wolsey, whom Henry had exalted to great power in the 
kingdom, endeavored to effect a marriage between him and some 
French princess in order thereby to forward his own design upon 
the papal throne, but did not succeed in this. The influence of 
Wolsey tended to keep Henry's passions in check; but the latter 
becoming at length weary of the exercise over him of a watchful 
control, Henry resolved to disagree with him permanently and at 
length banished him from the court. Wolsey submitted with such 
gentleness as, it is said, would have propitiated any but a tyrant 
before resolved upon his destruction. Wolsey was, however, 
followed into his retreat and there apprehended for treason and be- 
ing taken to London for execution was seized with a mortal dis- 
ease. On the approach of his death he remarked: " Had I but 
served my God as diligently as I have served my king he would 
not have given me over in my gray hairs." 

Wolsey's crime being a denial of the king's spiritual supremacy, 
which denial he had to make if he continued a sworn liege man of 
the pope, mayor may not in the judgment of the thinking world, 
have justified Henry's proceeding in condemning him to death for 
the denial of that which he had assumed as his own right. With- 
out either attempting to justify or palliate the cruelties of Henry 
VIII., the question, you perceive, was in this case, whether the 
pope or Henry VIII. should be supreme in England ; and whether 
those who had sworn to support the pope's supremacy (which all 
of the ministers of the Roman Catholic Church had to do as pre- 
liminary to the performance of their sacerdotal functions) could 
longer continue to live in England, the law now recognizing here 
another supreme head than the pope? 

Never was a more absolute despot than Henry VIII. The clergy, 
the parliament, the people were all his most obedient slaves : and 
the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had only one neck, ap- 
pears to have been fully complied with in the case of the subjects of 
Henry in relation to their monarch, for with lamb-like gentleness 
the English people presented their necks to the axe and their bodies 
to the flames of that tyrant. "The flattery of courtiers," says Hume, 
"had so influenced his tyrannical arrogance that he thought himself 
entitled to regulate, by his own particular standard, the religious 
faith of the whole nation." 



282 CREATOR AND COSMOS ', OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

The "real presence " was a favorite doctrine of Henry's, and 
man}' suffered ignominiously for the denying of it. There was one 
Lambert, a schoolmaster, who denied this doctrine, and being cited 
before the prelates, Cranmer and Latimer, and having no other way 
of escape from that tribunal, he appealed to the king. Henry, not 
displeased with an opportunity when he could at once display his 
theological learning, upon which he prided himself much, and exert 
his supremacy, accepted the appeal and determined to mix in a very 
unfair manner the magistrate with the disputant. Public notice 
was given that the king intended to enter the lists with the school- 
master : scaffolds were erected in Westminster Hall for the accom- 
modation of the audience, the king appeared on his throne accom- 
panied with all the ensigns of royalty ; the prelates were placed on 
his right hand. the temporal peers on his left ; the judges and the 
most eminent lawyers had a place assigned them behind the bishops ; 
the courtiers of greatest distinction behind the peers, and in the 
midst of this brilliant as'semblage was produced the unhappy Lam- 
bert, who was required to defend his opinions against his royal 
antagonist. The bishop of Chichester opened the conference by 
stating that Lambert being charged with heretical pravity had 
appealed from his bishop to the king, as if he expected more favor 
from this application, and as if the king could ever be induced to 
protect a heretic. That though his majesty had thrown off the 
usurpation of the see of Rome, had disincorporated some idle monks 
who lived like drones in a bee-hive, had abolished the idolatrous 
worship of images, had published the Bible in English for the in- 
struction of all his subjects, and had made some less alterations 
which every one must approve of,* yet was he determined to main- 
tain the purity of the Catholic faith, and to punish with the utmost 
severity all departures from it; and that he had taken the present 
opportunity before so learned and grave an audience of convincing 
Lambert of his errors : but if he still continued obstinate in them, 
he must expect the most condign punishment." 

After this not very encouraging preamble, the king asked Lambert 
what his opinion was of Christ's corporeal presence in the sacrament 
of the altar ; and when Lambert began his reply with some compli- 
ment to his majesty, he rejected the praise with indignation and dis- 
dain. He afterwards pressed Lambert with arguments drawn from 
Scripture and the schoolmen. The audience applauded the force of 
his reasoning and the extent of his erudition ; Cranmer seconded his 



* Henry had gradually and previous to this trial, effected all that is here said. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 283 

proofs by some new topics ; Gardiner entered the lists as a support 
to Cranmer ; Tunstal took up the argument after Gardiner ; Stokely 
brought fresh aid to Tunstal ; and six lord bishops more appeared 
successively in the field after Stokely ; and the disputation, if it de- 
serves the name, was prolonged for five hours, till Lambert, fatigued, 
confounded, browbeaten, and abashed, was at last reduced to silence. 
His majesty then returning to the charge, asked him whether he were 
convinced ? And he proposed as a concluding argument this inter- 
esting question, whether he were resolved to live or to die ? Lambert 
who possessed that courage which consists in obstinacy, and, doubt- 
less, fully persuaded of the truth of the principles which he supported, 
replied that he cast himself wholly on his majest} r 's clemency. The 
king told him that he would be no protector of heretics ; and there- 
fore if that were his final answer, he must expect to be committed to 
the flames. Cromwell, the king's minister, pronounced sentence 
against him. 

Lambert did not appear any way daunted by the terrors of the 
punishment to which he was condemned. His executioners took 
care to make the sufferings of a man who had opposed the king as 
intense as possible. He was burned over a slow fire ; his legs and 
thighs were consumed to the stumps ; and when there appeared no 
end to his torments some of the guards more merciful than the rest 
raised him on their halberts and threw him into the flames, where he 
was consumed. While they were employed in this friendly office, 
he cried aloud several times : " None but Christ, none but Christ." 

Eleven monks, some of them priors, were executed at Tyburn 
for denying the king's supremacy. Fourteen Dutch anabaptists, who 
had come to reside in England, were also burned at the stake. The 
execution of the bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas Moore, both 
men of very high character, for denying the king's supremacy, very 
soon followed. Both of these died with great magnanimity, and the 
latter uttered several modest pleasantries on the scaffold ; when lay- 
ing his head on the block he put his beard aside with his hands, re- 
marking that it had not committed treason. These arbitrary murders 
raised a general outcry, and the tyrant's name was execrated through- 
out the Catholic world. 

Henry next resolved on the suppression of the monasteries and the 
sequestration of their revenues, a measure arbitrary and despotic 
indeed, but nevertheless productive of good effects, in that it released 
many persons whom the avarice or superstition of their parents or 
their own inclination to an inactive life had immured in these seclu- 
ded and unnatural abodes. These convents were nurseries of idle- 



284 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ness, and must have been, however they were maintained, a burden 
on the country. By their suppression the king acquired a large 
amount of money. 

Cardinal Pole, a second cousin of the king, found it expedient to 
absent himself from England during the rigorous persecutions which 
Henry was carrying on. He was one of the most active of the Papal 
agents, and had endeavored in vain to excite the neighboring Catholic 
nations to avenge, by a warlike movement, the injuries suffered by 
the Church. Unable to get this formidable foe into his hands, the 
king seized his brother, Lord Montague, and several other persons of 
distinction, who were executed on a charge of abetting his designs. 
An inconsiderable rebellion broke out in Yorkshire, but it was soon 
suppressed, and Nevil, with the other ringleaders, was executed. The 
rebels were supposed to have been instigated by the intrigues of 
Cardinal Pole ; and Henry was instantly determined to make the 
countess of Salisbury, Pole's aged mother, suffer for her son's offences. 
He ordered her to be carried to execution, and that venerable matron 
displayed great dignity or obstinacy on the scaffold. She refused 
to lay her head on the block or submit to a sentence where she had 
received no trial. She told the executioner that if he would have her 
head he must win it the best way he could ; and thus shaking her 
venerable gray locks she ran about the scaffold, and the executioner 
followed her with his axe, aiming many ineffectual blows at her neck 
before he was able to give the fatal stroke. 

These are merely a few examples of the murders committed by 
Henry VIII. which may serve as a specimen of his long reign. An 
act of parliament was passed giving to the king's Proclamation all 
the authority of a Statute of Parliament, thus making him an abso- 
lute despot. And this omnipotence or absolute despotism was re- 
tained and exercised by the English monarchs henceforward for 
over one hundred and thirty years, down to the latter part of the 
reign of Charles I., and after the restoration till the accession of Wil- 
liam III., at which time parliamentary liberty began to be a little 
more freely exercised. 

The execution of Sir Thomas Moore, the chancellor of the king- 
dom, whose office he afterwards gave to Cromwell, and who is said 
to have resembled the ancient sages more than any man who had 
appeared in Europe for centuries, awakened the indignation of all 
Christendom. This man refused either to affirm or deny the validity 
of Catharine's marriage or the supremacy; although he declared 
himself ready to swear that he would support the succession to the 
cruwn established by parliament. It was for denying the king's 



PROTESTANT-KEFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 285 

spiritual supremacy that Fisher, bishop of Kochester, as Cardinal 
Wolsey, suffered death. 

Three years after his marriage with Anne Boleyn Henry had 
her beheaded under an accusation of adultery ; and in her stead 
married Jane Seymour, who died after giving birth to a son, who 
became in time Edward VI. A marriage was then arranged for 
Henry with Anne, duchess of Cleves, which eventually terminated 
in a divorce, and then he married Catharine Howard, who was 
brought to the scaffold. His sixth and last wife was Catharine 
Parr, who survived him. 

By his will Henry left his crown, first, to his son Edward, the 
son of Jane Seymour; next, to Mary, daughter of Catharine of 
Arragon ; and next, to Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. On 
his death, his son, Edward, being only nine years of age, the gov- 
ernment was committed to a regency at the head of which was the 
king's uncle, Henry Seymour, earl of Hertford, now created duke 
of Somerset, with the title of protector, Cranmer being appointed 
one of the executors of Henry became the principal guardian and 
instructor of the young king. 

On the accession of Edward VI., the son and successor of Henry 
VIIL, the more advanced reforming party came into power in Eng- 
land. Cranmer, being appointed one of the executors of Henry, 
became the principal guardian and instructor of young Edward. 
The Duke of Somerset, w T ho became protector, had long before been 
regarded as a secret partisan ot the Reformers; and being now freed 
from restraint, he made no scruple of discovering his intention to 
correct all abuses in the old religion, and to adopt still more of the 
Protestant innovations. " The protector," says Hume, " in his 
schemes for advancing the Reformation, had always recourse to the 
counsels of Cranmer, who being a man of moderation and prudence, 
was averse to all violent changes, and determined to bring over the 
people by insensible innovations to that system of doctrine and dis- 
cipline which he deemed the most pure and perfect. He probably, 
also, foresaw that a system which avoided the extremes of reforma- 
tion, was likely to be most lastin'g ; and that a devotion merely 
spiritual was fitted only for the first fervors of a new sect, and upon 
the relaxation of these, naturally gave place to the inroads of super- 
stition. He seems, therefore, to have intended the establishment of 
a hierarchy which, being suited to a great and settled government, 
might stand as a perpetual barrier against Rome, and might retain 
the reverence of the people even after their enthusiastic zeal was 
diminished or entirely destroyed." * This remark of 1 1 nine, that a 



* Home's History, Reign of Edward VI. 



286 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

merely spiritual religion is fitted only for the first fervors of a new 
sect, we do not consider just. Behold, for example, the Mohammedan 
religion, which is very widely spread and established for over a dozen 
of centuries without any regular priesthood or spiritual hierarchy, 
and which is surely a spiritual religion, and we do not find that it is 
now more mixed with superstition than it was at its first promulga- 
tion. Also, Methodism in all its branches, which is likewise in 
effect a kind of Unitarianism (as is also Presbyterianism becoming 
now almost universally), and which is in some sense a spiritual 
religion, is not more mixed with superstition to-day than when it was 
first promulgated ; and while recognizing its commendable spirit of 
humility and industry so characteristic of the spirit of primitive 
Christianity, I may be allowed to remark that the priesthood should 
in all cases guard against any exhibition in themselves of a spirit of 
intolerance, so characteristic of ignorance, worldliness and bigotry, 
or of self aggrandizement, arrogance and hypocrisy so character- 
istic of a lordly hierarchy. The more spiritual the worship the 
more acceptable to God, and the more permanent in its good effects* 
" A committee of bishops and divines," says Hume, " was ap- 
pointed by the council under the protector to compose a liturgy, 
and in the year 1549 they had accomplished the work committed to 
them. They proceeded in this undertaking on moderate principles, 
retaining as much of the ancient mass as the principles of the Re- 
formers would admit, and indulging nothing to the spirit of contra- 
diction which so naturally takes place in all great innovations ; and 
they flattered themselves that they had established a service in 
which every denomination of Christians might concur." f The 
mass had always hitherto been celebrated in Latin; a practice which 
could not have been edifjdng to the people, but was useful to the 
clergy, in that it impressed the people with the sense of some mys- 
terious virtue in these rites. But the Reformers pretended in some 
few particulars to encourage private judgment in the laity. And 
the translation of the liturgy, as well as of the Bible, into their 
vulgar tongue appeared more comformable to the genius of their 
sect ; and this innovation, with *the retrenching of prayers to the 
saints and of some superstitious ceremonies, was the chief difference 
between the old mass and the new liturgy of the Church of England. 
This form of worship was established by Parliament in all the 
Churches of the Kingdom, and a uniformity was ordained to be 

t Hume, Edward VI. 



PROTESTA1ST-REFOUMKD CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 287 

observed in all the rites and ceremonies. The same parliament en- 
acted a ]#w permitting the marriage of priests, and in the preamble 
confesses " That it were better for priests and the ministers of the 
church to live chaste and without marriage, and it were much to be 
wished that they would of themselves abstain." 

The doctrine of the "real presence," though tacitly condemned 
by the new liturgy and by the abolition of many of the ancient 
rites, still retained some hold on the minds of the people. And it 
was the last doctrine of popery that came to be pretty universally 
abandoned by the English. Bishops Bonner and Gardiner for in- 
culcating this doctrine were committed to prison, and there were 
many other instances of persecution for non-conformity with the new 
religion derived from the bigotry and rancor of theologians. 

u Though the Protestant divines," says Hume, speaking with 
reference to this time, " had ventured to renounce opinions deemed 
certain during many ages, they regarded, in their turn, the new 
system as so certain, that they would suffer no contradiction with 
regard to it ; and they were ready to burn, in the same flames from 
which they themselves had so narrowly escaped, every one that had 
the assurance to differ with them. A commission by act of council 
was granted to the primate and some others, to examine and search 
after all Anabaptists, heretics, or contemners of the Book of Common 
Prayer. The commissioners were enjoined to reclaim them if possi- 
ble, to impose penance upon them, and to give them absolution ; or 
if these criminals were obstinate, to excommunicate and imprison 
them, and to deliver them over to the secular arm ; and in the exe- 
cution of this charge they were not bound to observe the ordinary 
methods of trial ; the forms of law were dispensed with ; and if any 
statutes happened to interfere with the powers of the commission, 
they were overruled and abrogated by the council." * Thus all 
were compelled to worship this image of the Romish system of re- 
ligion. A woman named Joan Bocher, or Joan of Kent, accused of 
heresy, was committed to the flames. Afterwards a Dutchman named 
Van Paris, accused of the heresy then called Arianism, suffered the 
same cruel death. " These rigorous methods of proceeding," says 
Hume, "soon brought the whole nation to a conformity seeming or 
real with the doctrine and the new liturgy. — To dissent from tin 1 
religion of the magistrate was at this time universally conceived and 
felt to be as criminal as to question his title, or rebel against his 
authority." 



* Hume: Edward. VI. 



288 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Edward's health having failed and the hopes arising to the 
Protestants from his attachment to their cause being likely to be 
blighted the duke of Northumberland sought to prepare the way 
for the elevation to the throne of his son Guilford Dudley, who 
had married the lady Jane, granddaughter of Mary, youngest 
daughter of Henry VII. To lady Jane young Edward was friendly, 
arising from their association together as schoolmates under Roger 
Ascham and through the influence of Northumberland and without 
their own knowledge Edward had signed an instrument in writing 
declaring Jane Gray his successor. When, on the death of Edward, 
she was informed of her elevation 'she is said to have fainted from 
surprise and grief, and, on her recovery, remonstrated against her 
advancement to the position, urging the prior claims of Mary and 
Elizabeth. Her scruples were, however, at length overcome by 
the persuasion of her aspiring relatives; she accepted unwillingly 
the proffered honor and was proclaimed queen. Hereupon ensued 
a contest between Northumberland and the partisans of Mary in 
which the latter were successful. The duke was condemned and 
executed for treason, and his son Guilford Dudley with his wife, 
queen Jane, soon after met the same fate. Next were tried and 
executed their leading partisans. Mary, having been proclaimed 
queen, the Protestant bishops were deposed and the Catholics re- 
stored. Mary soon after was married to Philip of Spain, the son 
of the emperor Charles V, to whom through her mother she was 
nearly related. Consequent upon Mary's marriage with Philip, 
who was as bigoted a Catholic as she herself the Protestants be- 
came much alarmed and an insurrection broke out headed by the 
duke of Suffolk and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who urged Elizabeth to 
assume the crown. She, though sympathizing as strongly as they 
with the cause of the reformation, either through a sense of pru- 
dence or of the prior right of her sister declined to meddle in the 
matter. 

Shortly after Philip's arrival in England the realm was with great 
ceremony reunited to the church of Rome and was absolved by 
Cardinal Pole, the Pope's legate, from the sins of heresy and 
schism. Not only at Rome was this event celebrated with gre;it 
rejoicings ; but in England it was the signal of lighting up the fires 
of persecution, which now during a good part of this wicked reign 
were kept burning. The first martyr was John Rogers who was 
burned at Smithfield on March 4th, 1555. Then in like manner 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 289 

were martyred the Fathers of the English church, the bishops 
Cranmer, Hooper, Latimer and Ridley. The number of those 
who suffered martyrdom for conscience sake in this short reign 
(1553-1558) in England is estimated at 400, of which 290 were 
burned at the stake. Many of the English Protestants in this reign 
sought and found refuge in foreign lands. John Calvin was then 
engaged in teaching theology at Geneva, he being esteemed of 
great repute among the reformers ; and in Switzerland, therefore, 
some of the English refugees sought and found for a time an asylum. 
In 155 S Mary dying, her husband Philip departed from England 
and Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. Some have thought that 
Mary's cruelties to the Protestants may, to some extent, have been 
prompted by her husband and however this may have been, it is 
true the murders permitted by Mary in England on account of re- 
ligion were nothing when compared with those caused by the In- 
quisition in Spain in the reign and with the consent of her grand- 
mother Isabella, the patron of Columbus. Yet Isabella, even by 
Protestants, is lauded, while her granddaughter is by them styled 
" the bloody Mary." In order to partially understand the spirit 
of Elizabeth's reign attend to the following facts concerning it, 
which are culled from the principal histories : — 

On the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, the protestant 
the progress of the Reformation was retarded in England for four or 
five years, 1553-1558. She retaliated on the Protestants, and during 
her short reign many of the most eminent of them, including the 
bishops Hooper, Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer, were burned at the 
stake. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, the Protestant 
religion was again restored. During her reign of 45 years, the non- 
conformists, the Papists in particular, suffered equal rigors as the 
Protestants did in the reign of Mary. Under this Queen, whom the 
Protestants of a later day have called " that bright occidental star," * 
it was decreed that whosoever, in any way, reconciled any one to the 
Church of Rome, or was himself reconciled thereto, was declared to be 
guilty of treason. To say mass was subjected to the penalty of a year's 
imprisonment and a fine of two hundred marks. The being present 
at mass was punishable by a year's imprisonment, and a fine of one 
hundred marks. f A fine of twenty pounds was imposed for being 
absent from church a month. A severe law was also enacted against 
Jesuits and popish priests. The most reliable historians, and some 
even of those who defend the Queen's measures, allow that in ten 
years fifty priests were executed, and fifty banished. This Queen, as 
her father, Henry VIII. , appears to have had an absolute control of 



VJ 



* See Preface to Kin- James' translation of the Bible. 
t A mark equalled 13s. 4d. English; about $3. 22. 



290 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the parliament. u In so great awe did the commons stand of every 
courtier as well as the crown," says Hume, " that they durst use no 
freedom of speech which they thought would give the least offence 
to any of them." The same author says : " The Queen appeared 
rather more anxious to keep a strict hand over the Puritans ; who, 
though their pretensions were not so immediately dangerous to her 
authority, seemed to be actuated by a more unreasonable obstinacy, 
and to retain claims of which both in civil and ecclesiastical matters, 
it was as yet difficult to discern the full scope and intention. Some 
secret attempts of that sect to establish a second congregation and 
discipline, had been carefully suppressed in the beginning of 
this reign; and when any of the established clergy discovered a 
tendency to their principles by omitting the legal habits and cere- 
monies, the Queen had shown a determined resolution to punish them 
hy fines and deprivations ; though her orders to that purpose had 
been frequently eluded by the secret protection which these sectaries 
received from some of her most considerable courtiers." 

It is seen, therefore, that the English Protestant Church, as the 
Lutheran and others, followed the example of its Mother Church of 
Rome, in compelling all to conform to it. But the most powerful 
and effective instrument of persecution, as well as the most perfect 
substitute for Papal cruelty, during the reign of Elizabeth, was the 
Ecclesiastical Court of High Commission, established by John Whit- 
gift, the Queen's primate, in 1584. He appointed forty -four com- 
missioners, twelve of whom were ecclesiastics, to visit and reform all 
errors, heresies, schisms, etc., to regulate all religious opinions, to 
punish all breaches of uniformity in the exercise of public worship ; 
to make inquiry, not only by legal methods of juries and witnesses, 
but by any other means which they could devise, by rack, by torture, 
inquisition, by imprisonment, etc." When they found reason to sus- 
pect any person they administered to him an oath called ex officio, by 
which he was bound to answer all questions, and might thereby be 
obliged to accuse himself or his most intimate friends. The fines 
which they levied were discretionary, and often occasioned the 
total ruin of the offender, contrary to the old laws of the kingdom, 
by which this commission was not bound. The imprisonments to 
which they subjected any delinquent were limited to no rule but 
their own pleasure. " These ecclesiastical commissioners," says the 
historian,* " were liable to no control; in a word, this court was a. 
real inquisition, attended with all the iniquities as well as cruelties in- 
separable from that tribunal. 



* Hume : Reign of Elizabeth. t Hume : Reign of James I. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 291 

It is thought the position Elizabeth and her government took in 
relation to the Catholics may have been caused by the opposition 
which the Catholics in the beginning of her reign had manifested 
to her, claiming that the marriage of her father with Anne Boleyn, 
her mother, was invalid and she consequently illegitimate ; to this 
effect the pope had issued a bull absolving her subjects from their 
oath of allegiance. Her cousin Mary of Scots, queen of France, was 
deemed by the Catholics the lawful heir. She had been educated 
in France and had become the wife of Francis II., king of that 
country. By the advice of the duke of Guise and the Cardinal 
of Lorraine, brothers of her mother, Mary of Scots and of France 
had assumed the arms and title of queen of England, thus giving 
alarm to Elizabeth, though she took no immediate measures to sup- 
port her claim. All this it is thought might have caused the stern 
position taken by Elizabeth and her government towards the Catho- 
lics : but, otherwise, she is said to have made herself as a mother 
to her subjects, never refusing to receive and consider the petitions 
of the lowest of them and to judge between such and their power- 
ful oppressors. Yet, like her father, Henry VIII., she may be 
said to have had a will of her own both in secular and ecclesiastical 
affairs, and although her reign procured to England pros- 
perity and peace, yet was it without civil or religious liberty. 
Towards the end of this reign, however, the freedom of speech 
in parliament became noticeable, the queen granting with a 
good grace what in the earlier part of her reign she would have re- 
fused. But the exploit of her reign which filled Europe with ad- 
miration was not so much the defeat of the Spanish Armada as the 
circumnavigation of the globe by Sir Francis Drake. In 1578 Eliza- 
beth gave to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the first patent given by En- 
gland for lands in the new world. Gilbert having lost his life in 
an attempt to settle the country the queen transferred his patent to 
his brother-in-law, Sir Walter Raleigh. The coast discovered by his 
navigators, and which he was at much expense to colonize, without 
success in leaving permanent settlements, was called Virginia after 
this virgin queen. 

On the death of Elizabeth in 1603, after a reign of 45 years, 
the crown passed quietly from the house of Tudor to that of Stew- 
art. Her successor James VI. of Scotland and 1st of England, the 
son of Henry Stewart of Darnley and of Mary queen of Scots, was 
great grandson of Henry VII., the first of the house of Tudor by 
his daughter Margaret. A little after his accession the Puritans, a 
people who pertained to the church of England, but who regarded 



292 CREATOB AND COSMOS; OB, COSMOTHEOLOG1ES, ETC. 

its ceremonies and forms as an image of Romanism, petitioned the 
king for their discontinuance. In his earlier years James had im- 
bibed their notions as promulgated by John Knox ; but when he be- 
came established in power, as a monarch, he feared the democratical 
tendency of their principle. His maxim is said to have been : " No 
bishop, no king." In order, however, to come to a definite under- 
standing on the subject he convoked an assembly at Hampton 
court : and having listened to the arguments on both sides, said at 
its close he would have one doctrine, one discipline, one religion in 
substance and ceremony," and he, therefore, enjoined upon the 
Puritans to conform to the established worship. He soon after 
made arrangements for that translation of the Scriptures which down 
to our time has been the standard among Protestants. That there 
was a strong and influential party among the Catholics of England 
opposed to James is shown by the concoction of the gunpowder plot 
in the second year of his reign, the design of which was to blow up 
the parliament and royal family. He was quite absolute and un- 
compromising in his ideas concerning the national religion. The 
following which is extracted from the book " Christ's Second Ap- 
pearing," found in one of the libraries of Union college, will 
partially indicate the spirit of his reign. 

The spirit of this bloody inquisition continued through the reign 
of King James I., who is canonized in the preface to the translation 
of the Bible, effected under his reign, as " The Most High and 
Mighty Prince James." " Under this reign," says Hume, " there 
was no toleration for the different sects. f Two heretics, under the 
title of Arians, were burned to death. A professor of theology, 
named Vorstius, a disciple of Arminius, was called from a German 
to a Dutch university, in the year 1611 ; and,. as he differed from 
his Britannic Majesty, who prided himself highly upon his theologi- 
cal and scholastic learning, in some nice questions concerning the 
intimate essence and secret decrees of God, he was considered 
as a dangerous rival in scholastic fame, and was at last obliged to 
yield to the legions of that royal doctor, whose syllogisms he might 
have refuted or eluded. James, in other incidents of whose reign 
vigor was wanting, here behaved even with haughtiness and inso- 
lence ; and the States were obliged, after several remonstrances, to 
deprive Vorstius of his chair, and to banish him from their dominion. 
The King carried his animosity against that professor no farther ; 
though he had very charitably hinted to the States, " That, as to the 
burning of Vorstius for his blasphemies and atheism, he left them to 



t Hume : Reign of James I. 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 293 

their own Christian wisdom ; but surely never heretic better deserved 
the flames." " It is remarkable," says Hume, " that at this 
period, all over Europe, except in Holland alone, the practice of 
burning heretics still prevailed, even in Protestant countries; and 
instances were not wanting, even in England, during the reign of 
James." 

Tke 69th Article, Partiament 6th of James VI. of Scotland, 
declares " that there is no face of kirk, nor other face of religion 
than is presently at this time established within this realm, which 
therefore is ever styled God's true religion and a perfect religion, 
which by manifold acts of parliament all within this realm are 
bound to profess, to subscribe the articles thereof, the confession 
of faith, to recant all doctrines and errors repugnant to any of the 
said articles." " And all magistrates on the one part are ordained 
to search, apprehend, and punish all contraveners. That all kings 
and princes at their coronation shall make their solemn oath in the 
presence of God that they shall be careful to root out of their 
empire all heretics." 

The enterprise which James pushed forward so zealously for the 
settlement and improvement of Ireland is considered one of the 
most commendable measures of his time. Certain customs, which 
had supplied the place of laws and had kept the country in a state 
of disorder he abolished. Among others was that called the eric, 
wherein, as among the Anglo-Saxons, a price was set upon every 
man by the payment of which his slayer would escape punishment. 
The modern English laws were substituted and regular courts of 
judicature established ; while for the enactment of such new laws 
as might be necessary an Irish house of commons was regularly 
constituted. Ulster was colonized by Scotch and English Protest- 
ants. Recommending a union of the Scotch and English parlia- 
ments he found this not accomplished in his reign, but for himself 
he assumed the title of " King of Great Britain." The colonization 
of America he also earnestly encouraged. His accession to power 
appears an epoch in the history of England. We appear to be 
here arrived not only in the feet but in the toes of Daniel's image. 
Considering also the time of the rise of this empire ; for the point 
we have arrived at is that of the first origin of the nation of Great 
Britain ; of the union of many kingdoms in one ; have we not, I say, 
in this empire so called of " Great Britain " the Roman empire of 
Constantinople revived in the west? Or, is it for no reason that 
people have long remarked that England does in effect possess 



294 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Constantinople? The Turks, it is true, occupy that city with a 
portion of the eastern empire; but, it is often asked, how long 
they would be likely to occupy it, were it England's interest that 
they should not be there? So talk the wiseacres. But the dispos- 
ing of the Lord so far is, of the Lord, I say, who is stronger than 
either England or the Turks, that England is in her place and the 
Turks are in the place wherein they are; and they both go along 
together just as they do. Or have we not rather in the " Great 
Britain " we are considering, the ecclesiastico-political Roman em- 
pire of the west, revived still father in the west? The former 
being the original of the prophetic presentation of Rev. XVII, is 
not this a prophetic re-presentation thereof farther in the west? 
But this subject will become more clear before we are through with 
our demonstration. 

Charles I. , the son and successor of James I. , came to the throne in 
1625. The parliaments in his time, being set for the curtailment of 
the royal prerogative, he had much trouble with in obtaining from 
them supplies for the expense of the government. Having in a 
flurry dissolved two or three parliaments because they did not 
promptly act as he wished, then, when he summoned the next and 
it had voted the supplies he required, they on their own part pre- 
pared a bill setting forth the illegality of measures he had practiced 
and securing their liberties from future infringement. This bill, 
called the "Petition of Rights," having passed both houses and 
been presented for Charles' signature, he signed it in such a way 
as to indicate that he did it unwillingly. This parliament proceed- 
ing still farther in the reformation of abuses, he soon prorogued. 
The parliamentarians now complained much of the absolutism of 
Charles. The Puritans, now also become a numerous body, com- 
plained of the rigorous measures taken by the episcopacy to enforce 
conformity with the rules of the established church ; while this 
church, under the control of the extremist, Archbishop Laud, in- 
creased their cause of complaint by introducing new ceremonies, 
which manifestly showed a tendency to the Roman Catholic forms 
and faith. 

High Churchism, or Ritualism , was never carried to a higher pitch 
than by Bishop Laud, in the reign of Charles I., the son and succes- 
sor of James. This King, a severely high churchman, endeavored 
to introduce the English mode of worship into Scotland, but met with 
such a determined opposition from the people there, most of whom 
were attached to the Presbyterian mode of worship, that he failed in 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 295 

accomplishing his object. To show the pitch to which bishop Laud 
brought affairs in the Church of England during his reign, we may 
give an account of the process by which that prelate consecrated St. 
Catharine's Church. On the bishop's approach to the west door of 
the church, a loud voice cried : " Open, open, ye everlasting doors, 
that the king of glory may come in ! " Immediately the doors of the 
church flew open and the prelate entered. Falling on his knees, with 
eyes uplifted and arms expanded, he uttered these words : " This 
place is holy ; the ground is holy ; in the name of the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy." Going toward the chancel lie 
several times took up from the floor some of the dust and threw it 
into the air. When he approached, with his attendants, near to the 
communion table, he bowed frequently toward it. And, on their re- 
turn, they went round the church, repeating, as they marched along, 
some of the psalms ; and then repeated a form of prayer which con- 
cluded with these words : " We consecrate this church and separate 
it unto Thee as holy ground, not to be profaned any more to common 
uses." After this, the bishop, standing near the communion table, 
pronounced many imprecations upon such as should afterwards pol- 
lute this holy place by musters of soldiers or keeping in it profane 
law courts or carrying burdens through it. On the conclusion of 
every curse he bowed towards the earth and cried : " Let all the 
people say, Amen." 

The imprecations being all so piously finished, there were poured 
out a number of blessings upon such as had given or should here- 
after give to it any chalices, plate, ornaments or utensils. At everv 
benediction he, in like manner, bowed toward the east and cried : 
" Let all the people say, Amen." The sermon now followed, after 
which the bishop consecrated and administered the sacrament in 
the following manner : As he approached the communion table he 
made many low reverences ; and coming up to that part of the table 
where the bread and wine lay, he bowed seven times. After the 
reading of many prayers he approached the sacramental elements 
and gently lifted up the corner of the napkin in which the bread 
was placed. When he beheld the bread he suddenly let fall the 
napkin, flew back a step or two, bowed three several times toward 
the bread ; then he drew nigh again, opened the napkin and bowed 
as before. Next he laid his hand upon the cup which contained the 
wine and had a cover upon it. He let go the cup, fell back, and 
bowed three times toward it. He approached again and, lifting the 
cover, peeped into the cup. Seeing the wine, he let fall the cover, 
started back, and bowed as before. Then he received the sacrament 



21)6 CREATOR AND COSMOS ', OS, COSMOTHEOLOOLES, ETC. 

and gave it to others. And after many prayers said, the ceremony 
of the consecration ended. The walls and floor and roof of the 
fabric were then supposed to be sufficiently holy. Orders were 
given and rigorously insisted on, that the communion table should 
be removed from the middle of the area where it hitherto stood in 
all the churches except in cathedrals. It was placed at the east 
end, railed in, and denominated an altar ; as the clergyman who 
officiated received commonly the appellation of priest. The clergy 
were rigorously compelled to observe every ceremony, and were 
suspended and deposed by the High Commission Court if they were 
found to neglect any of them. Oaths were also imposed upon the 
churchwardens by many of the bishops ; and they were sworn to 
inform against any one who acted contrary to the ecclesiastical 
canons. The popish practices which were introduced into the 
Church during this reign had so scandalized the minds of the stricter 
Protestants that they zealously opposed them and gladly suffered 
for their principles. " All the severities, indeed, of this reign," says 
Hume, " were exercised against those who triumphed in their suffer- 
ings, who courted persecution and braved authority." * 

Into Scotland Charles made a tour for the purpose of bringing 
the Scots to conform to the customs of the English church; but the 
cause he came to forward had the effect of making the people of 
that country oppose him. Against popery and prelacy an outcry 
was raised, and both the clergy and people entered into a bond of 
union, pledging themselves to resist all religious innovations and to 
support each other against all opposition. This agreement was 
called "The solemn league and covenant." In order to obtain 
means to sustain an army in opposition to the covenanters, Charles 
now summoned another parliament, but had to dissolve it again 
without obtaining any aid therefrom. The army of the covenant- 
ers now advanced into England, defeating on the way a portion of 
the royal army at Newcastle. In their march southward at this 
time the Scotch are said to have maintained the strictest discipline ; 
they paid for what provisions they received on the way, and made 
protestations of loyalty to the king, wishing, they said, only to ob- 
tain from him redress of their grievances. 

Charles now, in 1640, convened the assembly called the u long 
parliament." This parliament impeached and beheaded Went- 
worth, earl of Stafford, as well as Bishop Laud and Sir Robert 



* Hume : Reign of Charles L 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 297 

Berkeley. To the incarcerated Puritans it opened the prison doors 
and abolished the court of " star chamber" by which the late kings 
had oppressed the people. They then passed an act declaring that 
bishops should not sit in the upper house of the legislature, and 
another act which made their own sitting perpetual. At this time 
a rebellion broke out mysteriously in Ireland, wherein more than 
10,000 Protestants are said to have been massacred by the Catho- 
lics. Among others the king was suspected of having been one of 
its instigators. In its grant of money to suppress this rebellion 
parliament did not allow the money to get into the king's hands. 
Now, however, that precedent and law and order were set aside 
everywhere appeared turmoil and confusion. Bands of apprentices 
patrolled the streets of London, who, wearing their hair cropped 
around, Captain Hyde drew his sword and said he would " crop 
the ears of the round head dogs," and from hence the parliamen- 
tary party were called the " roundheads." 

Charles then, having impeached five members of parliament for 
resisting his authority, sent a sergeant to the house to arrest them ; 
but he was sent back without any positive answer. The king then 
proceeded in person with armed attendants to the house ; but found 
that the five members were gone ; and withdrawing he was greeted 
with the cry of " privilege of parliament." Tumults succeeded 
and the royal family were obliged to leave London. Both the 
royal and parliamentary parties then proceeded to decide the con- 
test by force of arms. AtEdgehill an indecisive battle was fought 
wherein the royalists were commanded by Charles and his nephew, 
prince Rupert of Hanover ; his opponents being led by the earl of 
Essex. At Lansdowne also the battle was indecisive in its result; 
But at Stratton and Round way down the royalists were victorious. 
Again an indecisive battle was fought at Newbury, wherein both 
sides sustained great loss. 

The Scots now united with the parliamentarians, while by the 
Irish Catholics succors were sent to the king. At the ensuing bat- 
tie of Marston Moor the parliamentarians were victorious. In this 
battle 50,000 troops were engaged. The parliamentary command- 
ers were Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell ; the royalists were 
led by the marquis of Newcastle and prince Rupert. At Nasby 
Charles commanded in person and lost the battle. Here he is said 
to have displayed " the conduct of a prudent general and the valour 
of a stout soldier." On the loss of this battle Charles retreated to 
Wales, but finding himself unable to retrieve his fortunes he re- 



298 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

solved to throw himself upon the generosity of the Scots. Pre- 
senting himself at their camp at Newark he was at first received 
with marks of respect ; but he was detained a prisoner and at length 
delivered to the parliamentarians for 400,000 pounds sterling. By 
these he was kept at Holdenby until a change of events took him 
out of their hands. 

For between the opponents of Charles there arose conflicting in- 
terests and hostile feelings. Another religious sect had meantime 
risen, which maintained among other opinions that right of free- 
dom for all, in matters of religion, which is at this day so exten- 
sively acknowledged. These were the "Independents" at whose 
head was Oliver Cromwell. They were opposed not only to roy- 
alty and prelacy but to the presbytery ; their expressed desire was 
that a republican government be established. Cromwell by the 
zeal which he manifested for equal rights in religion as in all other 
things gained the confidence of the army. Desiring to obtain pos- 
session of the king he sent a detachment of five hundred men, who 
conducted him from Holdenby to his camp. At the head of his 
army Cromwell now marched to London, where he dictated laws 
to the long parliament, which had by this time become extremely 
unpopular with the nation. He paid, at the same time, great court 
to Charles, whom the opposition of the two parties had again 
brought into prominence. But the king even now rejected over- 
tures for reconciliation, refusing to relinquish his high pretentions 
or to allow to the people such a share in the government as they 
claimed. At Hampton Court Cromwell and his adherents estab- 
lished him and enabled him to live there for some time with the 
appearance of freedom. 

At length, for some reason, this situation becoming unpleasant 
or dangerous for Charles, he escaped to Litchfield, where he re- 
mained for a while concealed, but was at length compelled to place 
himself in the custody of Hammond, governor of the Isle of Wight. 
Here he was kept a close prisoner until at length his opponents, 
fearing for their own safety in case of the revival of his party, 
arraigned him on a charge of treason for levying war against the 
parliament, condemned and beheaded him upon the scaffold in 
1649. 

The commons now passed an act abolishing kingly power and 
the house of Lords as altogether unnecessary. The great seal of 
the nation, the form and inscription whereof they had changed to 
suit their purpose, they committed to a certain number of persons, 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 299 

who were styled the " Conservators of the Liberties of England." 
The war had, on both sides, been largely maintained by private 
contributions, but even thus the excessive imposts made by the long 
parliament for revenue had at length made that institution quite 
unpopular. It had besides, meantime, passed some very strict and 
severe laws concerning religion, under one of which a venerable 
Catholic clergyman, named Southworth, aged 72 years, was burned 
at the stake at Winchester, for the crime of being a popish priest. 
"On the scaffold he reproached his persecutors for their incon- 
sistency.' ' 

By the course which the Puritans and Presbyterians pursued wher. 
they were in power we see that whatever be the doctrines men pro- 
fess, however spiritual and free from idolatrous tint, and however 
fervent and enthusiastic these men be in their religious devotions 
and professions, they still, when they come into power, are not un- 
likely to enact like cruelties with other more formal and idolatrous 
religionists, though probably not to the same extent. And all these 
developments are simply the outworking of human nature, perhaps, 
in enthusiastic devotion, or in excessive zeal in supporting some 
favorite idea, or in bigotry or hatred, or personal animosity, or pecu- 
liarity of temper and disposition in individuals. They are the out- 
working of the principles of human nature which comprises in itself 
the two extremes of bad and good ; and these principles are developed 
in actions, the motives of which are attributed to religion, or God, 
or something else, which latter are merely ideas and may mean really 
nothing more. 

From the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. down to after 
the time which we are now considering, say to the accession of Wil- 
liam III., the rulers of England were distinguished for their cruelties 
in persecuting and killing their fellow-men, and this especially in 
support of an ecclesiastical system which they had established. They 
compelled all within the range of their power to bend to their idea, 
their will, or their caprice. 

Cromwell having been appointed by parliament military governor 
of Ireland soon reduced that island to submission. In Scotland the 
Marquis of Montrose, attempting to form an army in the royal 
cause, was overcome and executed with forty others. 

The Scottish covenanters, resolving now to support the mon- 
archy, equipped an army of 36,000 men and proclaimed Charles 
II., king. Him they recalled from Holland, and, on his return, 
before landing, had him sign the covenant. Parliament now, re- 



300 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

calling Cromwell from Ireland, sent him with full power against 
the Scots. At Dunbar he met and defeated them, and proceeded 
to take possession of Edinburgh aud Leith. But meantime the 
Scots, though weakened by internal dissensions and jealousies of 
the prince they supported (having kept a national fast for his sins 
and those of his family) had again assembled an army with which 
Charles entered England. But Cromwell, the ensuing year, fol- 
lowed and defeated this royal army at Worcester. Cbarles being 
obliged to flee, after more than a month's concealment in different 
disguises, made his way to Normandy. 

The authority of the commonwealth was now acknowledged 
throughout the English possessions, Cromwell being in supreme 
command of the army with the title of " Captain General." He 
was aware, however, that he was distrusted by the parliament; and 
taking a company of soldiers, he entered the parliament house, 
commanded the speaker to leave his chair and told the members 
they had sat long enough for what good they had done. Then in 
a strong stentorian voice he addressed individual members, telling 
Sir Hary Vane he was a juggler, Challoner he was a drunkard, and, 
in short, charging some with breaking one commandment, some 
another, and, finally, telling the whole: "You are no longer a 
parliament ; I say you are no longer a parliament." Cromwell was 
now, while speaking in the name of liberty, become a military 
despot. By a council of his officers he was appointed "Protector 
of the Commonwealth," and addressed by the title of " highness." 

He next having summoned a number of men from the three king- 

© © 

doms, so that all might be represented in one parliament, soon 
found their views not correspondent with his and so dissolved this 
parliament. 

A war now ensuing between England and Holland Cromwell's 
fleet was triumphant after a prolonged struggle of three days. The 
commonwealth rose now to great importance among the nations of 
Europe, its ambassadors being present at almost every court. At 
this time Jamaica, one of the West India islands, was retained to 
the English by Admiral Penn. By the long Parliament the settle- 
ments in North America were favored; but from Cromwell they 
received a severer blow than they had received from the Stewarts 
in the " Navigation Acts ' by which he introduced a restricted 
system of trade, prohibiting the colonists from using their own 
ships, and thus obliging them to sell their products to the English 
and to obtain from them the supplies they wanted. Cromwell made 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 301 

all his foreign relations, colonial and otherwise, subservient to the 
home interests, so far as his foresight allowed him to judge should 
be so: His domestic government, too, was perhaps as mild and 
equitable as his dangerous situation permitted it to be, beset as he 
was by enemies who conspired against his life ; yet it was vigorous 
and " he was guilty of some acts of tyranny such as Charles I. never 
dared venture upon." Five years after he obtained the protectorate, 
or in the ninth year after the death of Charles I. Cromwell died, 
and was succeeded in the protectorate by his son Ei chard, whose 
mild and unambitious disposition unsuited him for the turbulence 
and noisy cabals which were about him. He resigned the protect- 
orate and retiring first to the continent and afterwards to his estate 
in the country he lived unoffending and unmolested. Into so many 
political and religious parties was the nation now divided that the 
people became weary of the confusion resulting from change and 
expressed generally their desire for the restoration of the monarchy. 

Monk, an able commander both by sea and land, was now at the 
head of the army in Scotland; and, having formed a plan for the 
elevation of Charles II. to the throne, he marched to London. 
Here he procured the dissolution of the existing parliament and the 
election of a new one, to which when assembled he read a letter 
from the prince offering a general pardon; promising liberty of 
conscience ; assuring the soldiers of the payment to them of their 
arrears; and submitting all grants to parliamentary arbitration. 
Monk had also the house of lords now again to assemble, and both 
houses jointly proclaimed Charles II. king. Sir Matthew Hale, 
chief justice, seconded by Prynne, wished to have limitations put 
upon the royal prerogative ; but these suggestions were, for reasons 
of his own, overruled by Monk. Charles having come from Holland 
was proclaimed king in London on July 15th, 1650. 

Charles was a person of agreeable appearanee and engaging man- 
ners, but his real character was soon found not to correspond with 
these. His great deficiency was in moral principle; his great want 
morality. Licentiousness quickly sprang from the court, more or 
less throughout the kingdom ; and although he had sworn to sup- 
port the solemn league and covenant and to protect the rights of 
conscience, he re-established episcopacy as the exclusive religion ; 
restored the bishops to their seats in parliament and the inferior 
clergy to their benefices. This, however, may be called but an 
ignoring of the contract he had sworn to when we compare it with 
his treatment of the Puritans. In relation to these he caused the 



302 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

" Act of Uniformity" to be passed by which it was ordained that 
every minister of religion, schoolmaster or graduate of a college 
in taking his degrees, must declare his consent to everything con- 
tained in the " Book of Common Prayer ; " and that all ministers 
should be ejected who had not already received or would not re- 
ceive episcopal ordination; that they should take the oath of canon- 
ical obedience; should abjure the solemn league and covenant; and 
should renounce the principle of taking up arms against the king 
on any pretense whatever. The terms of subscription had now 
been made so rigid that the more scrupulous among the Presbyte- 
rians and Independents would not receive it and about two thousand 
of the clergy relinquished their cures, preferring, for the most 
part, to rely for support upon the humane charity of society than 
to renounce their principles. 

Against those concerned in the death of the late king prosecu- 
tions were now commenced. Some were executed and others fled 
to foreign countries, where they were hunted under the name of 
" regicides." 

In this reign the English navy triumphed largely over the Dutch. 
In 1664 New Amsterdam was taken by the English and called New 
York, after the title of the king's brother, James, Duke of York. 
To his favorites Charles grant ed large tracts of land in America. 

To Charles II. succeeded, in 1685, his brother James II., whose 
character was no less deceptive than that of Charles. Having as- 
sembled his council he declared his determination to maintain the 
established government both in church and state. His conduct, 
however, in sending to make submission to the pope ; going in state 
to attend mass, which by act of parliament was illegal; levying 
taxes without consent of parliament; and advancing Catholics to 
office, while he displaced Episcopalians, and the like, soon con- 
vinced the people that his professions were not earnest. Insurrec- 
tions which broke out in Scotland and in England, in consequence 
of this, were suppressed and their leaders executed. 

The infamous Judge Jeffries being chancellor of the kingdom 
now as well as in the preceding reign the frequent military execu- 
tions were attended with remarkable cruelty. While the monarch 
upheld such military executions, thus making himself hateful to the 
people, he at the same time made great pretensions to religious 
toleration. Wm. Penn, the son of Admiral Penn, and founder of 
the colony of Pennsylvania, was much in company with James and 
was deceived into the belief that this tyrant and bigot had good 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 303 

designs respecting liberty of conscience. But his intention to 
break down the democratic part of the English constitution and 
bring everything into subjection to his arbitrary will soon became 
manifest to him. This king became to the clergy of the estab- 
lished church quite obnoxious, not only depriving them of privileges 
formerly granted, but by directing them to read in public his 
declaration of equal indulgence to all religions. The Archbishop 
of Canterbury and six bishops petitioned the king that he would 
not oblige them to promulgate that which by former acts of parlia- 
ment was illegal. He answered by committing them to prison and 
prosecuting them for libel. Unless the Catholics and a certain 
number of officeholders under him the greater part of the nation 
now desired a change of the government; and many of the most 
influential persons in the kingdom banded themselves together and 
petitioned the prince of Orange, James' son-in-law, to come over 
and assume the government. This proposal was not unacceptable 
to William as he had had a design upon the English throne. Em- 
barking, therefore, his army for England he landed them at Torbay ; 
and so numerous were the accessions to his party that it seemed as 
if the whole nation had conspired in his favor. The navy and 
army also deserted to him. Being absent for a short time from his 
palace James returned and found his favorite daughter Anne had 
left him. " God help me," said the afflicted man, " my very chil- 
dren have forsaken me." The queen and the prince of Wales he 
sent to France, whither he followed them, as soon as he learned 
that William had begun to advance to London. The parliament 
now declaring the throne vacant proposed to William that he should 
act as regent to his wife as queen; but he sent them word that he 
would not accept of a power which depended upon the life of an- 
other, and that if they concluded upon this plan he could render 
them no assistance. Mary seconding his views, the prince and 
princess of Orange were declared king and queen of Great Britain. 
This event, called in English history the " Revolution," as that 
of the coronation of Charles II. is called the "Restoration," is 
one of the most singular and .important on record. The change 
was brought about almost without bloodshed; and, in its course the 
principle was acknowledged that the people had, through their 
representatives, a right to elect their sovereign. Thenceforth no 
king coulcl assume, as their former princes had done, that the 
whole kingdom was his, he deriving from God and the people from 
him. In England this relic of the feudal system was left behind, 



304 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

when James II. for his violations of constitutional liberty, was de- 
clared to have forfeited his throne, and William III. was, by the 
representatives of the people, made king in his place. 

Viscount Dundee in Scotland still held out for James and won 
a battle against William's forces, led by Gen. Mackay, but fell in 
the engagement. James and his family were hospitably entertained 
by Louis XIV. at his palace of St. Germain; and here now having 
collected a few hundreds of his own countrymen and some French 
he embarked with them for Ireland. In that country the earl of 
Tyrconnell, at the head of about 30,000 men remained faithful to 
him as well as the Catholic population in general; but the Protest- 
ants resisted with intrepidity though at times reduced to the utmost 
distress. As soon as matters connected with the English adminis- 
tration were somewhat composed William pioceeded to Ireland to 
take command in a war which he had hitherto left to his lieutenants. 
On the banks of the Boyne the opposing armies engaged each 
other, each led on by a monarch, when v < tory ultimately declared 
in favor of Willis m. James again fled to France and William had 
possession of Ireland. Though disturbance sometimes manifested 
itself during the reign of William yet the majority of the nation 
supported his measures. While he was personally engaged in the 
continental wars Mary administered with ability the affairs of En- 
gland ; but when her husband was present, she is said to have been 
the most submissive of wives. Her death was much regretted by 
all. William came to his death by a fall from his horse. He is 
said to have ruled with ability but not not well His ambition, 
which was considerable was not moderated to the extent it should 
have been by a regard for the good of mankind and especially for 
that of the people he governed. He determined so to sway the 
people of Europe " that not a gun should be fired without his con- 
sent.' ' To maintain large standing armies he commenced the system 
of borrowing money, which has, in its consequences, accumulated 
the enormous national debt that has brought England to the verge 
of ruin. 

It was by one of King William's armies that the notoriously 
brutal massacre of the MacDonalds of Glenco was perpetrated. 
In America "King William's War" reached the people of New 
England, where the French and Indians from Canada came stealthily 
upon them, awaked them from their slumbers with the war whoop 
to see their dwellings in flames, their children dashed against the 
walls ; and themselves reserved for scalping and torture. Thus in 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 305 

1690 were destroyed Casco in Maine, Salmon's Falls in New 
Hampshire and Schenectady in New York. Some of the measures of 
William III. in American legislation showed that he believed the 
free institutions of that new country were tending to independence 
and that he desired to bar their way. In his accession Puritan 
New England had rejoiced, and he recalled the tyrants of whom 
they complained and suffered the smaller States to go back to their 
charter democracies; but to the leading State, Massachusetts, 
whose people had shown the most determined self-will, he would 
not restore their former privileges but compelled them to receive, 
with a new charter, royal governors. Between these governors 
and their peoples began at once disputes, which were not settled 
till after the war of the revolution. 

During William's reign an act was passed, notwithstanding the 
opposition of the Jacobites, that is, the followers of James, which 
secured the crown to the descendants of Sophia, duchess dowager of 
Hanover, " they being Protestants.'' 

To William succeeded Anne, second daughter of James II. She 
continued the English alliance with Austria, and, during her reign, 
Churchill, who afterwards became duke of Marlborough, cut an im- 
portant figure on the continent at the head of the British forces. In 
her reign was accomplished the important event of the union of the legis- 
lative powers of England and Scotland; for although these two 
countries had now for 103 years, or since the accession of James I, 
been under one king, yet their legislatures continued to be distinct till 
this time. The bill, which was violently opposed in the Scottish 
parliament on the ground of inequality of representation, but was 
finally accepted on the parliament of England agreeing to pay 
398,000 pounds sterling as a consideration for its passage, allowed 
Scotland to send to the British parliament fort}^-five members 
and sixteen peers with reciprocal rights of trade. Of Scotland 
considered as an individual kingdom it diminished the political im- 
portance ; but it strengthened and consolidated the empire whereof 
Scotland was now but a territorial division. 

After a reign of 22 years Anne Stewart was succeeded upon the 
throne of Great Britain, in 1714, by George I, who was hereditary 
elector of Hanover and great grandson of James I, king of Great 
Britain, through his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Frederic, elector 
Palatine, and king of Bohemia. 

The three great political parties in the days of George I were 
the whigs or party of the people; the tories or party of the nobles; 

20 



306 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and the Jacobites, so called from their espousing the cause of King 
James (Jacob) II. This last party gaining ground in the Kingdom 
projected a change, and, in 1715, invited over from France the 
Stewart claimant, who by his party was called James III, Louis 
XIV, secretly favoring his cause. But the latter soon dying after 
a reign of sixty years, the duke of Orleans, now regent, although he 
did not openly oppose yet gave no promise of assistance to James. 
Meantime the earls of March and Derwentwater, who had risen in 
support of James in Scotland and the north of England, were 
crushed. After this the chevalier, as he was called, arrived in Scot- 
land and was proclaimed as James III by his followers; but finding 
his cause so dampened by defeat before his arrival, and learning 
that a large price was set upon his head, he re-embarked for 
France. Of his adherents some fled; some concealed themselves, 
and some were apprehended and treated with remarkable cruelty. 
In thirty years later (1745) when George II. was in alliance with 
Frederick the great of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria and 
had an army on the continent under the duke of Cumberland, act- 
ing against the French, another attempt was made to restore the 
Stuarts. The chevalier Charles Edward, son of the foregoing, 
landed in Scotland. Of Highland chieftains and Lowland barons 
he obtained a large following and at the head of a considerable 
army thus gathered, he surprised Edinburgh and established him- 
self in Holyiood house. Here he proclaimed his father king of 
Great Britain. At Preston Pans, shortly afterwards he gained a 
victory over the king's troops; taking alarm at which the parlia- 
ment recalled the duke of Cumberland from the continent, and sent 
him against the Stuart. Meantime, however, he had marched into 
England and taking Carlisle on his way, proceeded to Derby. But 
finding that few of the English Jacobites joined his standard and 
learning besides that extensive preparations were now being made to 
proceed against him he returned north. At Falkirk he again de- 
feated the royal troops, but Cumberland, following him closely, 
with a large force of veterans drawn from the continent and else- 
where came up with his small army at Culloden in the north of 
Scotland and obtained over him the victory. Stuart escaping from 
the field wandered afterwards for five months under various dis- 
guises, a heavy price being set upon his head. But the adherents 
of his family in the Highlands would not betray him for money. 
Much fault has been found with the duke of Cumberland for the 
cruelties which he allowed to be perpetrated upon the wounded 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 307 

enemy on the field of Culloden; but let that have been as it may, 
we have only to remark that thus was established upon the throne 
of Great Britain the house of Hanover, which has since remained 
undisturbed by other claimants. If now we reckon the dynasties 
which reigned in South Britain up to and including that of Hano- 
ver, we shall have to begin with the Roman, making a British 
dynasty second, which will answer also for the British rule, that 
preceded the Roman and of which we have little knowledge. Next 
we have to put the Saxon ; then the Danish, etc. The dynasties 
for this space are as follows : — 

1. Romans. 

2. Britons. 

3. Saxons. 

4. Danes. 

5. Normans. 

6. Blois. 

7. Plantagenet. 

8. Tudor. 

We may, therefore, call the ancient British the first dynasty, 
overlapping as it does, the Roman. The last dynasty here given, 
namely, that of Tudor, is in female descent from the 7th; for it 
was by right of descent from a daughter of John of Gaunt, 
son of Edward III, that Henry Tudor afterwards Henry VII, 
claimed the crown of England. The 8th dynasty, then, came 
into power in England as being of the 7th in this sense. In 
the sense, therefore, of being the ancient British rule revived 
it may be thought to present another prophetic prototype in that it 
was and (for a time) was not; and yet it was, when it did again at- 
tain to power. Between the ancient British dynasty, beginning 
with Vortigern and his son Vortimer, after the departure of the 
Romans, and the rise of the dynasty of Tudor there intervened six 
dynasties, so that immediately preceding the Anglo-Saxon, and 
immediately following the Plantagenet we have ancient British 
rule. Confer Rev. XVII, 8, 11, etc. In our present application 
of the prophecy it is to be remembered we are directing the atten- 
tion not to the original or prototype, but to an adumbration 
thereof. 

Moreover, if we commence to reckon with the Saxon dynasty in 
England and not take into account, as a dynasty the " long par- 
liament " nor the reign of William III., who was permitted to the 
throne in partnership with and in right of his wife, all of which 



308 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

portions of a period the Stuart dynasty may be thought to cover, 
then we have the house of Hanover as the 9th dynasty. These 
dynasties are as follows: — 

1. Anglo-Saxons, beginning with the union of the Octarchy. 

2. Danes 

3. Normans 

4. Blois 

5. Plantagenet 

6. Tudor 

7. Stewart 

8. Commonwealth 

9. Hanover 

This 9th dynasty, as that of Tudor, came into power by descent in 
female line from a 7th, in this case that of Stewart, as this latter 
dynasty did by descent in female line from the Tudors: For James 
Vlth, of Scotland, first dynast of "Great Britain," was son of 
Mary Queen of Scots (and Henry Stuart) which Mary was daughter 
of James V, King of Scots, who was son of James IV, and his wife 
Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England, who was first 
of the house of Tudor. 

The Stewart dynasty may be said to have existed in a stormy 
time, politically speaking; it embraced and overlapped the parlia- 
mentary anarchy and the "protectorate;" the latter, however, 
being undoubtedly a distinct dynasty. The heir apparent in this 
period, namely, Charles II. , was, arising, it is thought, from 
his association with low minded persons, not of such a high 
moral tone as suited Oliver Cromwell, nor does he seem to have 
improved much in this respect before he had advanced well in 
life. But whatever else the Stewart dynasty did and there is indeed 
much evil laid to its account it may be said to have consolidated 
the British empire. Its first dynast united in his person the 
crowns of north and south Britain; and under its last dynast, 
namely, queen Anne, the union of the Scotch and English parlia- 
ments was effected. Its first dynast gave also to the English world 
that translation of the Scriptures, which has been held as the standard 
to our own time ; nor did he leave only one copy of them in each 
church, tied by a chain, as Henry VIII did, but gave it to the free 
use of all the people of all the world. This dynasty of native 
Britons formed, indeed, an epoch in every way, and relinquished 
its power, gloriously energized under its last dynast, to the second 
elector of the ninth electorate of the German empire. This 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 309 

was George I. of England, the founder of the generally able 
minded house of Brunswick of Great Britain and Ireland. The first 
five English dynasts of this house, namely George I., II., III., IV. 
and William IV. were also electors of the German empire. Victoria, 
on her accession in 1837, was excluded by the Salic law from a 
German throne; and, so, Ernest, the oldest surviving son of 
George III., became king of Hanover. He was succeeded in 1851 
by his son George V. Four years previously, however, in 1832-3, 
the people of Hanover having manifested a desire for greater political 
liberty, were granted by the English government a new constitution, 
by which they have a legislature of two houses. According to this, 
some one of the royal family of England was to be chief executive. 

According to our last tabulation, the Germans replace their own 
race on the throne of England after the intervention of seven 
dynasties, as, after the intervention of six, the Britons replaced the 
Britons. 

But as to what is meant by the electorates of the German empire, I 
may repeat as said farther back that, in the year 1 355, this empire was 
divided by the terms of the constitution called the " Golden Bull," 
into seven geographical divisions or kingdoms called electorates, at 
the head of each of which was a sovereign or elector, whose oldest 
son was to be his successor in the electorate. This constitution 
which was framed and issued by the pope and the emperor Charles 
of Luxembourg, — one of whom appears to have been as devoted a 
Roman Catholic as the other, — remained as regards the number of 
electorates in statu quo for 293 years, or until by the treaty of 
Westphalia, which closed the " thirty years' war " in 1648, one of 
the electorates, namely, the Palatinate, was divided into two, called 
respectively the Upper and the Lower Palatinate. The Upper 
Palatinate was, at this time, given to the elector of Bavaria and the 
Lower to Charles Louis, the son of the former elector Palatine. 
Since 1692, according to Zimmerman (IV, 1549), Hanover has been 
reckoned a ninth electorate. 

The first German dynasty in Britain some would be disposed to 
consider as a prototype of certain of our Apocalyptic symbols. 
There were seven Anglic and Saxon kingdoms, called the Hept- 
archie, out of one of which, Deira, an eighth was formed, namely, 
Mercia (i.e., Mur-chaeth-ia, the land of the sea chief, or, literally, 
Merchant-land), in 586. This was, therefore, a seventh-eighth 
kingdom, and it was also an Anglic kingdom, as distinguished from 
Saxon; that kingdom which subjugated all the others, instead of 



310 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Wessex, as commonly understood: and the Angles gave to England 
its line of Anglo-Saxon kings after which the country was named 
England (Angle-land). 

Now, considering the intervention of the long parliament in the 
period given in our last tabulation, it may be said that if this ninth 
dynasty of Germans in England, namely the dynasty of Hanover, 
were alluded to in our Apocalyptic prophecies, under the general head 
we have been now considering, it is a very faint penciling of history 
which shows it to be so. It may, however, be answered that this 
is what was to be expected in this case, this dynasty, if referred to 
at all, being out on the verge of the prophecy, near, we hope, to 
the full introduction of the age of the Son of Man ; and in the time 
o*f which, it is much to be wished, that long-expected era may be 
ushered in. It is to be hoped that every day henceforth will dis- 
appear more from the world all such brutality, cruelty, ignorance 
and vice as hitherto has too much characterized and utterly degraded 
humanity, and that the whole human family will henceforth culti- 
vate the Christian doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God and 
brotherhood of man and live in all sincerity and action as becometh 
this doctrine. 

I have hitherto, under this head, spoken mainly of Germany and 
England, but as the Scandinavian and Sclavic nations come largely 
into view in the movement and effects of the Reformation it be- 
hoves to give these peoples a passing notice. 

The Scandinavians are those nations lying to the west and 
north-west of the Baltic. They are principally Denmark and Nor- 
way with their colony Iceland; and Sweden. They are one of the 
chief homes of the Goths in Europe from an early historical period. 
In the Middle Ages numbers of their inhabitants acted barbarously 
as sea kings or free booters. Before their conversion to Christian- 
ity they sacrificed human beings to their war gods in their barbar- 
ous religious rites. 

The first account we have in history of any of them having been 
converted to Christianity is of Harold, a Danish prince, who was 
baptized at Ingelheine, in the year 826. But they, as a race, em- 
braced Christianity with remarkable slowness, especially in what 
might be called their old homes, where they were not much brought 
into contact with outside influences. After, however, they had 
gotten a foothold in France, England, Italy and Sicily, thereinall 
to abide, they, coming into contact with the civilization and religion 
which had prevailed there long before, soon became of the Church's 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 311 

children some of the most devoted. In the movements of the 
crusades some of the greatest leaders, as Bohemond and Tancred 
and Robert of Normandy, were of this stock. Their abandonment 
of their barbarous and sanguinary customs was owing principally 
to their intercourse with more civilized nations, and to the influence 
upon them of Christianity, which was introduced into Denmark in 
the ninth century ; into Norway in the tenth and into Sweden in 
the eleventh. 

It was greatly to the advantage of Denmark, Norway and Swe- 
den that they were united under a common government by Mar- 
garet of Waldemar, daughter of Waldemar II., king of Denmark, 
and called "the Semiramis of the north." On her father's death 
she obtained, contrary to the Salic law, in force among the Danes, 
peaceable possession of the Danish sovereignty. Haquin, king of 
Norway, her husband, having died, she obtained in a like peaceable 
way, possession of the sovereignty of Norway. And such was her 
fame for wisdom and energy that when Albert, a German con- 
queror, was making good headway in his subjugation of the 
Swedes, they invited her to assist them. She went with an army 
in 1389, defeated Albert in battle and made him prisoner. After 
seven years of war the compact called the '* Union of Calmar," 
was made, which united the three nations in one confederacy, each 
having its own legislature, but all under the same monarch. Hav- 
ing elected Margaret, she, during her reign, established many wise 
regulations, and enabled the confederacy to progress rapidly in 
commerce and the arts. 

Margaret, having had herself no child, adopted Eric, a grand 
nephew, who proved to be a weak prince, and so in 1449 the 
" Union of Calmar " was dissolved. 

There now ensued a period of war when Sweden had a king of 
its own. In 1513 Christian II., called from his ferocious disposi- 
tion, "the Nero of the North," was king of Denmark and Norway; 
and Sweden, being divided between two conflicting parties, Troll, 
archbishop of Upsal, encouraged Christian to invade that kingdom. 
He did so, and having killed in battle the king, Steen Sture, was 
acknowledged king of Sweden by the diet. He then, having in- 
vited to a feast the nobles of the realm, treacherously slew ninety- 
four chief men and bishops, after which he let loose his troops 
upon the people and a multitude of Swedes were consequently sac- 
rificed. Gustavus Vasa, the son of a nobleman, fled and concealed 
himself among the mountains of Dalecarlia, whence he issued with 



312 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

a resolute band. His countrymen in large numbers joined his 
standard, and in 1523 they succeeded in expelling the Danes and in 
placing Gustavus on the throne of Sweden. In his reign Sweden 
prospered agriculturally and commercially, and, on the breaking 
out of the reformation he and his people received its doctrines. It 
was in defense of these that his descendant, Gustavus Adolphus, 
came forward as the hero of his age. With the latter to command 
her armies and his able minister, Oxenstiern, to manage her inter- 
nal affairs, Sweden rose in this period (1611-1632) to a first class 
power. 

At the death of the German emperor Rodolph, who was son of 
Maximilian II, the son of Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V, the 
imperial title fell to his brother Mathias : 1612. Before this the 
Protestant princes of the German confederation had formed a 
league called " the Evangelical Union." Hitherto Mathias had 
shown himself friendly to them, but their pressing demands for an 
extension of their privileges he now persistently resisted, and they 
complaining that he encroached upon their rights, took up arms to 
secure them. This proved the beginning of the " thirty years' war." 
The crowns of Bohemia and Hungary Mathias procured for his 
cousin Ferdinand, duke of Styria, whom he designed for his suc- 
cessor in the empire; but these measures so alarmed those nations 
that they now took part with the princes of the Evangelical union. 
In the midst of these disorders Mathias died and Ferdinand II was 
accordingly raised to the imperial throne. The Bohemians con- 
tinuing their revolt, deposed Ferdinand and elected to the sovereignty 
of their kingdom Frederic, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, who was 
son-in-law of James I, King of Great Britain, having married his 
daughter Elizabeth. This Frederic is ancestor of the British house 
of Hanover. Besides the support of the princes of the Evangelical 
Union, Frederic now received the aid of Bethlem Gabor, the chief 
or vaivode of Transylvania; a body of troops under Henry of 
Nassau from the Low countries, and 2,000 English volunteers. 
His forces were, however, unable to cope with the united forces of 
the emperor, the king of Spain and the archduke of Austria, which 
defeated him in a pitched battle at Prague. The imperialists hav- 
ing driven him from his palatinate deprived him of his electoral 
dignity which they conferred upon the duke of Bavaria. Much to 
the annoyance of his English subjects Frederic's father-in-law re- 
fused to assist him in his extremity. By this neglect the English 
thought James showed himself false to the Protestant cause. 



KOTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 313 

After crushing a league of the northern powers, at the head of 
which was Christian IV of Denmark, Ferdinand aspired to establish 
despotic sway in Germany; to reduce the princes to the rank of 
nobles and revive the imperial jurisdiction in Italy. He began by 
issuing an edict requiring the Protestant princes to restore the 
church lands and benefices, which they had possessed since the Peace 
of Passau. The princes, remonstrating, urged that the edict was 
illegal ; but, the emperor persisting, the Protestants formed a secret 
alliance with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. This monarch being 
a zealous Protestant, deemed it politic to unite his forces with 
those powers whose object was to weaken the influence of the house 
of Austria ; and besides he conceived he had good cause of dissat- 
isfaction with the emperor, for having assisted the Poles in oppo- 
sition to the Swedes. Mostly on account of religion, but partly to 
preserve the balance of power, Holland came into this confederacy 
and Charles I, then reigning in England, sent to the confederates a 
force of 6,000 men. The court of France also united itself with 
the Protestant confederates, it being the policy of Cardinal Riche- 
lieu, then prime minister of France, to curb the Austrian power by 
all means. 

Gustavus, having entered Pomerania, captured many strategic 
points ; and over the imperial forces under the command of Tilley 
he gained a complete victory at Leipsic. All the armies of the 
evangelical alliance now joining his standard Gustavus made him- 
self master of the whole country between the Elbe and the Rhine. 
Tilly, having been killed, Wallenstein, an equally able general, re- 
placed him. With him at Lutzen Gustavus engaged in battle: At 
daybreak the fighting began and lasted till sunset, when the obsti- 
nate and persistent valor of the Swedes left them in possession of 
the field. They had triumphed over a force of the enemy much 
superior in numbers, but Gustavus was killed. It is said that an 
enemy, finding him wounded on the field, asked him who he was, 
when he replied: " I am the king of Sweden, and I seal with my 
blood the Protestant religion and the liberties of Germany: " 1632. 

Gustavus having left but one child s a daughter named Christina, 
aged six years, the regency of the kingdom was committed to 
Oxenstiern. The war was continued in Germany and the Swedish 
ranks kept replenished with able bodied men and officers from the 
north well drilled and taught in the schools of Gustavus. Wallen- 
stein, the imperial general having been assassinated the command 
was given to Ferdinand, king of Hungary, eldest son of the em- 



314 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

peror. The imperial army was at this time strengthened by the 
accession of the dukes of Lorraine and Bavaria, together with a 
reinforcement of Spanish troops. At Nordlingen the army of the 
confederates under command of Gen. Horn and the duke of Saxe 
Weimar, encountered the imperial forces, and there ensued one of 
the bloodiest battles recorded in history, which resulted in the de- 
feat of the Swedes, With the Evangelical Union the emperor now 
(1635) negotiated the " treaty of Prague," by which the Protest- 
ants were left in possession of the church property and permitted 
the free exercise of their religion throughout the empire with the 
exception of Bohemia and the provinces of the house of Austria. 

Between Sweden and France a new alliance was now formed and 
the latter nation participated actively in the war. The elector of 
Saxony, an imperialist general, was defeated at Wittstock, in 1636, 
by the Swedish general Bannier. On the death of his father the 
king of Hungary succeeded as Ferdinand III., and continued the 
war against Sweden, France and the Protestant Union. Near Bris- 
sac, the confederates, under the duke of Saxe Weimar, defeated 
the imperial army and took possession of many towns. In Pomera- 
nia the Swedes triumphed. Bannier, having crossed the Elbe, en- 
tered Saxony, obtained advantages over the imperialists in several 
slight engagements, and, near Chemnitz, gained a complete victory. 
Bohemia he next invaded and was victorious over the imperialists 
under Hofskirk. The retreating army he pursued to the walls of 
Prague and took the imperial general prisoner: 1640. 

The emperor having convened a diet at Ratisbon Bannier formed 
a plan of attacking that city. Joined by the French under Guil- 
briant he crossed the Danube on the ice, captured 1,500 of the im- 
perialist cavalry, as well as the equipage and advanced guard of the 
emperor, who himself narrowly escaped. An unexpected thaw 
compelling Bannier to cross the river saved the city. A large im- 
perial army under Gen. Picallomini and the archduke Leopold 
now followed Bannier through Bohemia, but before they came up 
with him he died. On learning this Oxenstiern dispatched Torten- 
sohn, a general who had fought under Gustavus Adolphus, with a 
strong force of men to till Bannier's place and re-enforce the army. 
Guilbriant, however, had with his French forces defeated the 
imperialists near Wolfenbuttel. On the arrival of Tortensohn, the 
French and Swedes separated, the former entering Westphalia and 
the latter Bohemia. Now ensued a series of victories for the 
French by which was reduced the electorate of Cologne ; and for 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 315 

the Swedes after which Leipsic surrendered. The court of Vienna 
in dismay began negotiations, which were retarded by the death of 
Cardinal Richelieu and his master Louis XIII. 

Meantime Tortensohn turned his forces against Denmark, the 
king of that county having before exhibited hostility to the 
Swedes. The emperor, being appealed to, sent one of his generals 
to assist Denmark ; but before they came to a conflict an accommo- 
dation was made by the mediation, it is said, of France? France 
and Sweden now procured an agreement with George Racoczi, the 
vaivode of Transylvania, who having invaded Hungary divided the 
imperial forces. Tortensohn having invaded Bohemia, after an 
unsuccessful attempt at surprising Prague, drew the imperialists 
into an engagement and got a complete victory. Meantime the 
imperalists, under the elector of Bavaria, encountered the French, 
now under marshal Turenne, and dealt them a defeat on the plains 
of Mariendal. 

Turenne, however, making a successful retreat, crossed the Main 
with little loss ; being soon after re-enforced by 8,000 men under 
the duke of D'Enghien he encountered the Imperialists at Nord- 
lingen and was victorious. This success of the French spread ter- 
ror through the provinces and induced the electors of Bavaria and 
Saxony and the German princes to renounce their alliance with the 
emperor and make a peace with France. By the armistice of Ulm 
the elector of Bavaria in the following year induced Wrangel, the 
Swedish general that had succeeded Tortensohn, to abandon Bo- 
hemia. But the truce was violated, the next spring Wrangel, 
joined by Turenne, having encountered the imperialists and de- 
feated them at Zummerhausen. Konigmark, another Swedish gen- 
eral, took possession of Prague. All these results compelled the 
emperor to sue earnestly for peace and negotiations were entered 
into which resulted in the treaty of Westphalia, which was signed 
on October 24, 1648. This treaty is of the nature of a confedera- 
tion between the contracting parties; it looks to the preservation of 
the balance of power, and has served as a basis for the future 
treaties, most of the succeeding wars having reference to this. Its 
conditions evidence the humiliation of Austria. France received 
Alsace, Brisac and the sovereignty of Metz, Tool and Verdun; 
Sweden received five millions of crowns with Upper Pomerania, 
the Isle of Rugen and a part of Lower Pomerania, Wismar, Bre- 
mar, and Verden to be held as fiefs of the empire. The upper 
palatinate with the electoral dignity was continued to the duke of 



316 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Bavaria, while the lower palatinate was restored to Charles Louie 
son of the deposed elector;- an eighth electorate being established 
on his account. Holland and Switzerland were declared to be free 
and sovereign states; and " the three religions, Catholic, Lutheran 
and Calvinistic," were each admitted to the free enjoyment of 
their tenets. 

Thus ended the thirty years' war, which had desolated the face 
of Germany, a war of principle rather than of conquest, Protes- 
tantism as in Sweden and Germany trying to defend itself from 
ecclesiastical tyranny; and nationality, as in France, trying to de- 
fend itself and to "keep its own from the giant force and selfish 
grasp of Austria. The ends for which the war was undertaken 
were accomplished ; freedom of religion was guaranteed ; there 
were the thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes of war; the 
great city, the church , is here shown to have been divided into three 
parts, — Catholic, Lutheran, Calvanistic, — each protected in its rights, 
each having a legal standing; the power of the Papacy was broken; 
the cities of the nations fell ; the pride of the German empire was 
humbled. 

Poland, anciently a home of the Vandals, was in 550 A. D. made 
a duchy. In about 850 Piastes, a peasant, was elected duke. He 
lived to the age of 120, and his successors, when native princes, the 
Poles called Piasts. About the time when Poland became a king- 
dom under Boleslaus III., in 999, Christianity was introduced. 
After this reign a succession of civil wars followed, until Casimir 
the just restored order in 1178. From Andrew IT. in 1122, the 
Poles obtained a great charter, which was the foundation of their 
national constitution. Considering the extent of this country and 
the great ability and natural energy of its people in the early ages 
we are led to wonder why it was the Poles did not become one of 
the first nations in Europe in every respect. But the Poles were 
not accustomed to agree among themselves and early begun to 
choose for themselves foreign sovereigns. I have learned that the 
Poles are a proud people; and, doubtless, they are much more so 
than is proper or for their good. How good and joyful a thing it 
is for brethren to dwell together in unity ! 

Louis, an able sovereign of Hungary, was in 1730 elected king of 
Poland, and he ruled a domain, part of which touched the Adriatic, 
the Euxine and the Baltic. Though often at war with Poland, 
Lithuania had till this period remained independent and was the last 
portion of Europe subjected to Christianity. The succession to the 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 317 

throne of Poland Louis had sought to secure to his eldest daughter 
Maria and Sigismund, elector of Brandenburgh, to whom she was 
affianced ; but the Poles preferring Hadwida, a younger daughter 
of his, she was married to Jagelo, duke of Lithuania, and he was 
elected under the name of Ladislaus I. Under him Poland and 
Lithuania were united; he was baptized in 1386, and his people 
were Christianized and under his dynasty Poland was prosperous. 

Prussia was conquered by the Teutonic knights, an order of 
military monks or knights-sword-bearers, who, returning from 
the crusades in 1225, obliged the people, at the point of the sword, 
to receive their religion and submit to their government. This 
country they almost depopulated by their barbarities. In behalf 
of those people oppressed, as they were by the government of the 
knights-sword-bearers, Casimir IV., king of Poland, took up 
arms, and long and bloody wars followed in which the knights were 
in 1466 overcome. Thus Prussia had for 241 years been subjected 
to the government of those Christian knights, who indeed must have 
presented a remarkable contrast to the soldiers which true Chris- 
tianity had ever sent forth in its missionary work. Albert, the 
grand master of the order, on being overcome by Casimir, renounced 
the Catholic and adopted the reformed faith and was made duke of 
east Prussia, as a vassal of Poland. He founded the university of 
Konigsberg. 

The first diet assembled in Poland was in 1468. The reigns of 
Sigismund I. and of his son and successor Sigismund II., which 
take us down to the year 1572, form the brightest period of Polish 
history. Poland gladly received the reformation and was the first 
of the nations to proclaim religious toleration. The male line of 
the Jagelons terminated in the death of Sigismund II., and, unfor- 
tunately for the country, foreigners were afterwards elected to the 
throne by the contentious nobles, who at the same time reduced to 
nothing the power of the people and of the sovereign, thus destroy- 
ing the frame and life of society and creating instead thereof a 
social monstrosity.* 

The nobles held their elections in the open air, armed and on 
horseback. Seldom agreeing upon one of their own number they 
usually offered their crown to foreign princes ; but it is to be here 
noticed that John Sobieski, the hero of Polish history, was a native 



* Poland was the ancient Sarmatia and, during the later portion of the Middle Ages, the 
principal home of the Sclavonic nations. Its fertile regions extended from the Black Sea to 
he Baltic. The Poles were anciently divided into small republics under chiefs elected for life 
culled palatins or vaivodes. 



318 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Polander, and was elevated to the throne after his defeat of the 
Turks in the battle of Choczim. For stopping the progress of the 
Turks westward, in 1673, he is called a second Charles Martel. 

After an alternation for some time now of foreign and native 
governors, Poland was in effect absorbed by Peter the great and 
his wife and successor the empress Catharine of Russia, who ban- 
ished and persecuted in various ways the Polish patriots. 

The Poles now solicited aid from the Turks, which was granted 
them, and which was the occasion of Catharine declaring war 
against the Porte. She sent her fleet through the Mediterranean 
to arouse the Greeks to revolt, but this movement, for some reason, 
produced no effect. Two Russian armies overran a portion of the 
Turkish dominions, which was a source of great anxiety to the 
Turks. In 1770 the Russians had still the advantages of war on 
their side, and a short period of doubt, — of alternate hope and 
fear, — was all that now remained to the little band of Polish pa- 
triots. What had come to their knowledge was this, that an agree- 
ment had been come to between Maria Ther sa, the empress of 
Austria, Catharine of Russia and Frederick, the great of Prussia, 
to divide their country among themselves, annexing their several 
portions to their own respective dominions. This was accomplished 
and Poniatowski, a native Polish prince, who was entirely under 
the control of this urumvirate, was by them constituted sover- 
eign of the remainder. 

Against these iniquitous proceedings the Poles could raise but a 
very feeble voice. The patriot Reyten, finding all was lost, became 
insane. Protestations sent to the other European powers went un- 
heeded. The patriot chiefs fled, all at least who could get away. 
Pulaski, having crossed the ocean, sacrificed his life in the cause of 
American independence, having been killed at Savannah in 1779. 

It was in the year 1702, when the " Grand Alliance," consisting 
of England, Holland and the German empire were preparing to 
make war with Louis XIV of France, that we find Prussia first 
spoken of as a kingdom. Into this alliance " Frederic, elector of 
Bradenburgh, had been won, by receiving from the emperor the 
title of King of Prussia. This is the first acknowledgment of 
Prussia as a kingdom." In the progress of this war during nine 
successive campaigns in so many years, the allies had not eventually 
made much headway against France. This is shown by the terms 
of the " Peace of Utrecht," which was signed in 1713, wherein it 
is specified that the Rhine was, as before, to be the established 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 319 

boundary between Germany and France. But, on the other hand, 
there is remarkably much conceded to England, which points to 
the success of her armies under Marlborough in those successive 
campaigns as also to the success of her navy. Among many con- 
cessions the title of Anne to the throne of England and the event- 
ual succession thereto of the house of Hanover was acknowledged by 
France; England, however, agreeing as a preliminary, to give the 
widow of James II, now resident in France, an annual pension of 
60,000 pounds sterling. 

In connection with and consequent upon the " Peace of Utrecht " 
two new kingdoms arose in Europe. Prussia the title of whose 
new king Frederick II was now for the first time acknowledged by 
France ; and Sicily, which, with his hereditary possessions, was 
erected into a kingdom for Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy. 

Charles VI, emperor of Germany, having no son , desired to 
secure the succession of the Austrian territories the hereditary 
domain of his family, to his daughter, Maria Theresa. To this end 
he issued his "Pragmatic Sanction," providing for the succession 
of female heirs. He had previously obtained the consent of the 
hereditary states of the empire, to which he now sought by nego- 
tiation to add the sanction of the other European powers, and in 
which he finally succeeded. He, therefore, thought he had se- 
cured to his daughter his rich possessions, including the kingdoms 
of Hungary and Bohemia; but, as afterwards turned out, the 
" Pragmatic Sanction," which they had guaranteed, proved a 
feeble barrier against the ambition and selfishness, which actuated 
the lives of some of the neighboring potentates. Immediately fol- 
lowing Charles' death were put forth the claims of the elector of 
Bavaria to the kingdom of Bohemia; and those of Augustus, elector 
of Saxony, now king of Poland, to the whole Austrian dominions. 
Maria Theresa, neverthless, took possession of her territories, 
most of her subjects, especially the Hungarians, being in her favor. 
She had previously married Francis, duke of Lorraine and she now 
desired his elevation to the imperial throne. 

But by this time (1740) Prussia had become a kingdom of con- 
siderable strength. Frederick William, its first king, had, by his 
economy, amassed considerable money in his treasury; and this, 
with 60,000 well appointed veterans, came into the hands of his 
son and successor Frederic II., whose desire was to employ the 
power and wealth whereof he was possessed in enlarging his terri- 
tories. The province he desired principally was Silesia, which per- 



320 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

tained to Maria Theresa. Into this province he led a powerful 
army and then offered to support her claims elsewhere on condition 
of her relinquishing to him Lower Silesia. His offer she rejected 
and prepared herself to resist his usurpation. At Mollwitz, their 
armies having'encountered each other, the Prussians were victorious 
and the whole of Silesia submitted to Frederic. 

The success of Prussia aroused the ambition of the French court 
and a league was formed between Louis XV. of France, Frederic 
of Prussia and Charles, elector of Bavaria, by which it was agreed 
to divide the Austrian dominions and place the elector of Bavaria on 
the imperial throne. Before the arms of the French and Bavarians, 
entering her territories, Maria Theresa retired to Hungary, where 
she was well supported not only by the people of that kingdom but 
by large armies from other quarters which here rallied to her stand- 
ard. The elector of Bavaria, considering the lateness of the sea- 
son and the strength of the fortifications of Vienna, turned his army 
toward Prague, which he took, and was there crowned king of Bo- 
hemia. Shortly after, proceeding to Frankfort, he was there crowned 
emperor of Germany under the title of Charles VII. Bavaria was 
now in turn invaded by the queen's armies. 

Regardless of his other engagements Frederic of Prussia now en- 
tered into a treaty with Maria Theresa; and she, granting to him 
Upper and Lower Silesia, which were the principal territories he 
now desired, he engaged to remain neutral. Meantime the French 
army was compelled to retire from Bohemia. Deserted by Frederic 
Louis now offered terms of peace which Maria Theresa refused. 
George n. of England now acting in spirit with Frederic of Prus- 
sia, sent to her aid British and Hanoverian troops and in the next 
campaign the French were cleared out of Bohemia and the new em- 
peror reduced to distress. Now the British, Hanoverian, and Aus- 
trian troops, under command of the English king, defeated the French 
at Dettingen, in 1743. Besides Maria Theresa acquired a new ally 
in the king of Sardinia. 

The haughtiness of the queen in rejecting every overture, conse- 
quent upon her late successes, now produced against her another 
coalition. Louis XV., having confirmed his alliance with Spain, 
declared war against England. Influenced by France, Prussia, 
Sweden and some of the German princes were at length induced to 
engage actively on the side of the new emperor as against Maria 
Theresa. Invading Bohemia the Prussian kins had for a time sue- 
cess, but was afterwards obliged to retire, surrendering his conquests. 



PROTEST ANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 321 

When in immediate danger of being driven from his capital the new 
emperor died. Maximilian, his son, now engaged in a treaty with 
Maria Theresa by which he agreed that her husband should be made 
emperor; she, on her part, engaging to put him in possession of 
his hereditary estates. The ex-duke of Lorraine was, accordingly, 
elected emperor at Frankfort under the title of Francis I. 

Frederic of Prussia did not at first acknowledge the validity of 
Francis' election. His armies continued the war in Silesia and Bo- 
hemia ; but after he had gained two decisive battles, one at Fried- 
burg in Silesia, and another at Sorr in Bohemia, a treaty of peace 
was signed at Dresden, by which he acknowledged Francis as em- 
peror and was confirmed in the possession of Silesia. 

In Flanders the French persistently prosecuted the war. Saxe, 
their commander, obtained a victory over the English and Hano- 
verians at Fontenoy and reduced Brabant. But, meantime, the 
French, having encouraged Charles Edward Stuart to make a de- 
scent upon Scotland, the Duke of Cumberland, the British general 
on the continent, was recalled to oppose him. The Austrians, 
being thus left to maintain the contest single-handed with the 
French in Flanders, Marshal Saxe obtained over them a victory at 
Roncoux in 1746. On the return of the Duke of Cumberland to 
the continent, in company now with the English king, a bloody but 
indecisive battle was fought at Val, after which the French be- 
sieged and finally captured Bergen-Op-Zoom, the strongest fortifica- 
tion in Dutch Brabant, a capture which created much consternation 
among the Dutch. 

At the motion of Louis XV., who now saw that his kingdom 
needed peace, a congress was opened at Aix-la-Chappelle, in which 
a treaty was agreed to on the basis of mutual restitution. The 
right of Maria Theresa to the 'hereditary possessions of the house 
of Austria, excepting such portions as were already ceded to other 
powers, was confirmed ; and the king of Prussia was guaranteed in 
the possession of Silesia. To the people of New England, who had 
evinced so much persistence and courage in the capture of Louis- 
burg, the key of the St. Lawrence and of the French possessions, 
and the strongest fortress then in America, the principle of mutual 
restitution was quite unacceptable. 

Thus ended the " eight years' war," which was carried on for 
the giatification of a few crowned heads, who moved, at their pleas- 
ure, large masses of men to the slaughter, and caused st roams of 
blood to flow for purposes worse than useless. With the desire of 
21 



322 CEEATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Frederic of Prussia to augment his territory at the expense of a 
young queen, who had, it is true, far too much in her own name, 
the war began ; and it ended with confirming to him those posses- 
sions, acquired with as much right as the bandit has to the prop- 
erty of the peaceable, industrious and law-abiding citizen : 1748. 

It is in the ninth century, that century which has given birth to 
so many great men and governmental systems, that we first meet in 
history with the name Russia. The Russians early sought and 
found trade with Constantinople. Swatoslaus, one of their princes, 
was induced by Nicephorus, emperor of Constantinople, to under- 
take the conquest of the Bulgarians, This the Russian prince hav- 
ing accomplished, he soon gave evidence of his near proximity to 
Constantinople. With a force of his barbarians he invaded the 
empire and Nicephorus found himself unable to cope with an enemy 
he had invited to his dominions. John Zimisces, his successor, 
was more successful. After several battles he succeeded in driving 
the intruders beyond the bounds of the empire. He pursued Swa- 
toslaus to Dritza on the Danube, and there besieging him let him 
free on condition that he and his followers return to their nation. 

Olga, the mother of Swatoslaus was a lady of remarkable abil- 
ity for her age and nation. She professed Christianity and was 
baptized by the patriarch of Constantinople. Her subjects she en- 
deavored to Christianize, but was successful to no remarkable de- 
gree. Her grandson, Vladimir, on his marriage with Anna, a 
princes of Constantinople, embraced the Christian faith, having de- 
termined to set himself against the idolatrous practices of his ances- 
tral religion. 

The historical greatness of Russia is, however, thought by his- 
torians to have begun in 1462 with Ivan Vasilovich, of the race of 
Ruric. Many petty chiefs of different degrees of authority had up 
to this period dominated in the different districts of those vast re- 
gions afterwards known geographically as Russia. Ivan, who pos- 
sessed great mental energy with extraordinary ambition, and was of 
the size and strength of a giant, centralized those territorial powers 
by subjugating the provinces. Since 1241 when the descendants 
of Jenghis Khan overran the country the Russians had been under 
the oppressive yoke of the " Tartars of the Golden Horde." A 
division of Tamerlane's army had in 1395 ravaged the country from 
Azof to Moscow, and after this the Russians were tributary to the 
" Horde of Khaptshak." These Tartars having disagreed among 
themselves divided into four sections, viz., the Tartars of the 



PROTESTANT- REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 323 

Crimea, of Khasan, of Astrachan and of Siberia. Of their disunion 
Ivan took advantage, not only refusing the tribute but making ac- 
tive war upon the Tartars. Naturally ferocious in his temper the 
character of Ivan was much modified by his wife, an accomplished 
Christian lady, being Sophia, the sister of Constantine XII, the 
last emperor of Constantinople. On account of this connection, 
and now that the empire of the east had fallen into the hands of the 
Turks, Ivan assumed to himself the title' of Czar (Cassar) and 
claimed as his right the throne of the Christian Roman empire of 
Constantinople. The Kremlin or citadel of Moscow he fortified, and 
by strict and rigorous rule at home, and war energetically carried on 
abroad, he consolidated the Russian government. 

Ivan IV, called the Terrible, 1546, formed a military guard called 
Strelitzes (Shooters), which were the original of the regular Rus- 
sian army. This despot subdued the Cossacks of the Don and the 
Tartars of Khasan and Astrachan, reducing the Khan of Siberia to 
tribute. With the Swedes, who afterwards warred upon him, he 
made peace by relinquishing to them Carelia and Ingria and all the 
Russian possessions about the Baltic. After his death occurred a 
period of anarchy within and an ingress of Tartars from without 
the dominion he labored to consolidate anJ establish. The Rus- 
sians at length, wearied with internal dissensions, rose up with one 
accord and, rejecting the competitors of the family of Ruric, ele- 
vated to the throne Michael Romanoff in 1613. To his long 
distracted country he restored peace as well as some of its 
alienated provinces. His son Alexis succeeded him who proved 
eventually to be a judicious ruler. The Cossacks of the Ukraine 
he reduced to subjection. In his reign and by his direction the 
Russian laws were revised. In the international politics of Europe 
he took interest, interchanging ambassadors with France and Spain, 
but refusing to receive one from England's " protector " Oliver 
Cromwell. 

Alexis was succeeded by his eldest son Theodore II., a sickly 
prince, who, on his premature death, was succeeded by his two 
younger brothers, Ivan and Peter. Sophia, their sister, however, 
by the force of her many sided natural ability, made herself the 
virtual head of the nation; notwithstanding the more than Salic 
laws of Russia, which doomed her, as an unmarried daughter of the 
Czar, to perpetual confinement in a convent. Ivan, feeble in mind 
and body, Sophia had no difficulty in managing as she wished, but 
Peter, though but a boy, manifested so much decision and energy of 



324 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

character, that, in order to retard his progress, she is said not only to 
have neglected his education, but purposely to have put him in the 
way of criminal pleasures, that he might thus ruin his physical and 
mental constitution. But divine Providence had otherwise de- 
signed concerning him. She even with the assistance of the 
strelitzes conspired against Peter's life. But he escaped and re- 
ceived the undivided sovereignty while she was confined in a con- 
vent. The desire to civilize and improve his people and procure 
for them the advantages of commerce by navigation and otherwise 
with the outer world appears to have been the ruling impulse of the 
very laborious life of Peter. 

To this object he devoted himself and, to a good degree, suc- 
ceeded in accomplishing it. Having made preparations by travel, 
experiment, etc., for the carrying out of his plans Peter set his eye 
to recover the provinces on the Baltic which formerly belonged to 
Russia, but now pertained to Sweden. Charles XII. at the age of 
15, having succeeded to his father Charles XI. in that monarchy, 
not only Peter but other surrounding sovereigns seemed to have 
conceived this to be a favorable opportunity for taking some of its 
territories. Against Sweden Peter now entered into a league with 
Frederic IV., king of Denmark, and with Augustus elector of Sax- 
ony, now reigning king of Poland, Peter desired especially some 
one of its provinces on the Baltic adjoining his own, whereon he 
could have a port; Augustus wished to have Swedish Livonia; and, 
as for the king of Denmark, he had a grudge against Charles of 
Sweden on account of his taking part with his enemy, the duke of 
Holstein Gottorp. The territories of the duke who was brother-in- 
law to Charles, the Danes had invaded ; but the duke was vigorously 
supported on this occasion not only by Charles, his brother-in-law, 
but by England and Holland with both of which he was allied. The 
king of Denmark being thus effectually repulsed, Charles carried 
the war into his country and besieged Copenhagen. Reduced to 
great distress the Danish king obtained the mediation of France 
and England and a peace was concluded between Denmark and 
Sweden, honorable to the latter. But while this settled the diffi- 
culty between Sweden and Denmark the former had yet to encoun- 
ter both Russia and Saxony-Poland and meantime the Russians 
had commenced hostilites and laid siege to Narva. Charles 
now advancing to the defense of that part of his kingdom, though 
the Russian army numbered 80,000 men, yet he with 8,000 having 
attacked their camp unawares defeated them and relieved Narva. 



PROTESTANT-REFOKMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 325 

Peter who was absent from the battle at the head of another army 
of 40,000 men, having learned of this retired into his dominions, 
exclaiming, it is said, " I knew that the Swedes would beat us, but 
in time they will teach us to beat them." Augustus had mean- 
time invaded Livonia and besieged Riga; and, after the relief of 
Narva, the season was too far advanced to admit of Charles going 
forward against Augustus ; but early in the spring he appeared with 
his Swedes against Augustus with his consolidated Saxons and 
Poles. On the banks of the river Dwina Augustus was stationed, 
and there Charles, after fording the river, encountered the main 
body and obtained a complete victory. Through Courland and 
Lithuania he then performed a rapid march, and at Birsen, the 
town in which Peter and Augustus had, a few months before, 
planned his destruction, he now formed a resolution of dethroning 
the king of Poland. Augustus had, from his arbitrary sway of the 
Poles, become unpopular with their nobility; and Charles peremp- 
torily declared he never would grant them peace until they had 
elected a new soverign. 

At Glissau the hostile monarchs met and the heroic Swede, 
though having but half the number of men, vanquished the Polish 
and Saxon army. Cracow surrendered, but Charles being wounded 
through a fall from his horse, was, for a few weeks, disabled, which 
afforded to Augustus an opportunity to rally his troops and sup- 
porters. But Charles, having recovered, marched against the re- 
mains of the Saxon-Polish army, dispersed them, and proceeded to 
besiege Thorn, whither Augustus had retired: but the latter, making 
his escape, fled to Saxony. At Warsaw Charles assembled a diet 
where by his influence Augustus was deposed and Stanislaus Lec- 
zinski, a noble Po lander, elected to the throne. The supplies of 
Russian troops which soon after arrived in Poland ^to aid Augustus, 
together with those Poles who joined the Russian standard in his 
aid, Charles and Stanislaus easily defeated and drove out of Poland. 
Charles, now, in pursuit of Augustus, entered Saxony, and, coming 
up with him at Ranstadt, compelled him to sign a treaty, whereby 
he. not only gave up all right to the kingdom of Poland, but ac- 
knowledged Stanislaus as king and sent him a letter of comrratula- 
tion. What has been regarded as a base feature of this treaty, on 
the part of Augustus, is that he delivered up to Charles Colonel 
Patkul, a noble Swede, who for having spoken freely to Charles on 
one occasion was expatriated, whereupon he went to Russia and 
was made by Peter his ambassador to Augustus. He having been 



326 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

now surrendered by Augustus, Charles condemned him to death, as 
one engaged against him in the service of his enemy. 

But while Charles was occupied with Poland and Saxony it ap- 
pears he was scarcely in his proper place; for Peter had, in the 
mean time, not only increased and better disciplined his army, but 
conquered the Swedish provinces of Ingria, Livonia and the city of 
Narva. In this newly conquered country and in a desert island, 
situated in the narrow strait, which separates the province of 
Carelia from that of Ingria, — an island which the long winter of 
that climate rendered quite inhospitable, — Peter founded a new 
city, which he designed to be the future capital and royal residence 
of the Russian empire. Into this city in less than five years after 
its foundation he had transported 300,000 inhabitants. 

But Charles of Sweden, now that he had subdued the Saxon-Polish 
army, made up his mind to march his army towards Moscow ; but 
finding that the main route by which he should travel was blockaded 
by order of Peter and having received a promise of aid from Mazeppa, 
then chief of the Cossacks, he penetrated the Ukraine in Septem- 
ber, and, overcoming every obstacle, advanced to the river Dwina, 
where he expected to be joined by the Cossack chief, as well as 
by his own general Lewenhaupt whom he ordered to meet him 
there with reinforcements. But Mazeppa had failed to fulfill his 
promise ; and Lewenhaupt had been met on his way from Livonia 
and defeated by the Russian army. 

Still the madly heroic Charles, while his army was daily dimin- 
ishing from famine and disease, pushed on his way. With the 
Russian army, consisting of 70,000 men, under the command of 
Peter, he came up at Pultowa, and here Charles, so often conqueror, 
suffered a defeat. With only 300 of his guards ha escaped wounded 
from the field, and, going to Bender, put himself under the pro- 
tection of the Turks . 

At this success over his renowned enemy Peter's joy was great. 
He advanced and rewarded officers and soldiers, who had distin- 
guished themselves in the engagement; and, as for himself, he 
having taken a Swedish commander prisoner and having had his 
hat perforated by a bullet, he, it is said, created himself a major 
general. 

Charles was received with favor by the Turks who treated him 
hospitably; and employing himself in seeking to engage the Otto- 
man empire in war with Russia the Turks showed their disposition 
thereto by imprisoning the Russian ambassador. Peter, learning 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 327 

of this advanced against Turkey at the head of 40,000 men. 
Cantimir, prince of Moldavia, had promised to aid him and he 
marched into his country. Near Jassy he discovered an army of 
200,000 Turks, and, not far away, a considerable army of Tartars , 
He fortified his camp on the banks of the Pruth, where he lay be- 
sieged by two hostile armies. The Russian provisions becoming 
scarce Peter was bewildered, not knowing what to do, and so retired 
in despair to his tent forbidding any one to follow him. The 
Czarina, Catharine, who had advanced to the position she now 
occupied from being at first a poor orphan girl, and who with the 
wives of several of the officers had accompanied the expedition, 
now bethought herself of a last resource. It occurred to her that 
a suitable present sent beforehand to the Turkish vizier might have 
the effect of making him approachable by an offer of peace. She, 
therefore, from all the ladies obtained their jewelry, on promise of 
future payment and adding her own to these she obtained the Czar's 
permission to send them to the vizier, who with marked courtesy 
received them from Catharine's messenger ; and, after due consid- 
eration, sent back an answer of accommodation. Peter and his 
army were saved, he surrendering to the Turks his ports on the sea 
of Azof. 

Meantime the war was kept alive in Sweden, consequent upon 
Charles refusing to sign a treaty which the emperor and maratime 
powers had formed. The Danes, Saxons and Russians continued 
hostilities against the Swedes who, though reduced to great distress, 
resisted perseveringly. The Turks, although they did not wish to 
violate the laws of hospitality, began to manifest uneasiness at 
Charles' Dresence amongst them. The latter noticed this but still 
remained; and one day, as he was riding past the vizier, and, as 
may have happened unintentionally, tore his robe with his spur. 
But intelligence at length having reached him that the Swedes 
were urging the regency of the kingdom upon his sister with 
the view of forcing her to make peace with Denmark and Russia, 
Charles was induced to return to Sweden; and five years after 
the battle of Pultowa he arrived at Stralsund in Pomerania, 1714. 

Here with the neucleus of an armv which had gathered around 
him he was besieged by the navy of the Czar, which had now ac- 
quired such strength as to command the Baltic. The place being 
taken by storm Charles escaped in a small vessel, passed safely 
through the Danish fleet and landed in Sweden. He arrived at 
Carlscroon fifteen years after he had left his capital bent on a career 



328 CREATOR AND COSMOS , OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

of conquest, a capital which now, in his humbled fortunes, he did 
not care to revisit. Contemplating his numerous enemies, which 
had possessed themselves of all his outlying provinces, and were 
now threatening Sweden itself, Charles knew not what, in the cir- 
cumstances to do. He finally concluded to invade Norway, then in 
the possession of Denmark, and there captured the city of Chris- 
tiana which he was soon after forced to give up. Nothing daunted, 
however, he a second time invaded that kingdom, and while watch- 
ing the attack of bis soldiers on Fredericshall, was struck on the 
head with a cannon ball and expired without a groan in 1718. 

Ulrica Eleanora, his sister, was now raised to the throne and by 
ample concessions Sweden succeeded in making treaties of peace 
with the different powers. Her most powerful enemy, the Czar, 
was the last pacified, and then only by having confirmed to him the 
important provinces of Esthonia, Livonia, Ingria and Carelia ; he at 
the same time paying to the Swedes an indemnity of two millions 
of dollars. 

Peter, in 1721, assumed the title of " Emperor of all the Russias," 
a title which all his successors have worn, and which answers to that 
worn at the same time, by the house of Hanover in England. He 
made an expedition to the Caspian, intending to attack Persia, but 
returned after the achievement of founding a city in his eastern pos- 
sessions. During Peter's life, his wife, Catharine was crowned, and, 
on his death in 1725, she succeeded to the government of the empire. 

In the eighth vear after the termination of the " eight years' 
war," which we have seen ended in the peace of Aix la Chapelle in 
1748, or in the same year in which occurred the earthquake at Lis- 
bon, swallowing up in the same hour 30,000 persons, namely in 
1755, commenced the " seven years' war," a war, indeed, no less 
destructive, but perhaps more so than that. 

Although, as we have seen before, Francis, duke of Lorraine, 
was elevated to the imperial dignity, yet he appears to have been 
not much more than a nominal emperor, his wife, the empress 
Maria Theresa, being the acknowledged head. And now for this 
war, Austria allied herself with France, Eussia and Sweden against 
Prussia, which for her part allied herself with England. The first 
of these coalitions must excite in the mind of the most sober thinker 
the idea of wonder, in consideration of its awful strength, but, as 
will be seen, after seven years of war it failed to accomplish its 
object and the terrific living colossus was shoved back into his place 
and confined there by the terms exacted in the treaty by the two 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 329 

powers, which in a later day effectually restrained the first Napo- 
leon. 

This war was undoubtedly incited by Maria Theresa against 
Frederick II of Prussia, because of her reflecting that, contrary to 
his agreement with her father he had possessed himself of Silesia. 
With the intention, therefore, not only of getting this back but of 
making reprisals by a partition of Prussia among her own coalition, 
she allied herself with France, which might now be called the 
hereditary enemy of her house. The war had not long begun when 
the French took Minorca. The king of Prussia invaded Saxony 
and compelled the elector, Augustus, to abandon Dresden, whereof 
he took possession. Having then invaded Bohemia he obtained a 
victory over the Austrians at Lowesitz. 

In the next campaign the French under marshal D'Etrees invaded 
and conquered Hanover, notwithstanding it was defended by the 
duke of Cumberland at the head of 40,000 Hanoverians and 
Hessians. In the succeeding campaign, 1757, it was reconquered. 
The kingdom of Prussia was now in a perilous condition, an army 
of 180,000 Russians threatening to invade it. The Swedes were 
in arms ready to invade Pomerania, in order to regain that country, 
and the empress Maria Theresa had increased her army to 180,000, 
intending to attack Prussia on the side of Austria. Frederic, 
therefore, found it necessary to make four divisions of his army, 
each of which was to enter Bohemia at a different point and all to 
join in the neighborhood of Prague. After three divisions had 
united Frederick offered battle to the Austrians, who, under com- 
mand of Marshal Daun and Prince Charles of Lorraine, were en- 
camped near Prague, and so vanquished them that they took refuge 
within the walls, which Frederic now closely invested. Frederic 
learning of the approach of marshal Daun with another division of 
the Austrian army advanced to meet him with part of his force, 
and, giving him battle at Kolin, was compelled to retreat and also 
to raise the siege of Prague and evacuate Bohemia. The French, 
Russians, and Swedes were now in Bohemia, but the military 
genius of Frederick was found eq, al to the occasion. Having col- 
lected another army he gave battle to the Austrians and Rus- 
sians at Rosbach and obtained a complete victory. He then 
marched into Silesia, where he met the Austrian army under 
prince Charles, encountered it and was again victorious. Moan- 
time the Russians having found it necessary to retire into their own 
territory, the Prussian force, which had been opposed to them, 



330 CREATOR AKD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

being left at liberty, turned against the Swedes and recovered 
many of their conquests in Pomerania. 

The next campaign the king of Prussia began by besieging 
Olmutz ; but after four weeks found it necessary to proceed against 
the Russians, who had invaded Brandenburg. At Zorndorf he ob- 
tained over them a complete victory, compelling them to retreat 
into Poland. Frederic was, however, afterwards defeated by the 
Austrians at Hochkirchen, but the battle was indecisive ; for he 
still retained Silesia and allowed them to derive no advantage from 
it. Marching next into Saxony, where the Austrians had besieged 
Dresden and Leipsic, he compelled them to raise the siege of both 
cities. Thus ended the campaign of 1758 triumphantly for the 
Prussians, the British being successful at sea. 

The next campaign opened with a reverse to the Prussians, the 
Russians having advanced upon Silesia and possessed themselves of 
Frankfort on the Oder. The Prussian monarch led his army 
against the combined Russian and Austrian army under Gen. 
Laudon, which was posted at the village of Cunnersdorf . Here 
ensued a most sanguinary engagement; and, notwithstanding the 
almost Herculean exertions of the Prussians, the Austrians and 
Russians prevailed. Frederic, at one stage of the battle, being 
under the impression that victory was his, wrote to his queen a 
congratulatory letter, saying: " We have driven the Russians 
from their intrenchments ; expect within two hours to hear of a 
glorious victory." His mental triumph was but of short duration, 
and in a few hours after another note orders the queen : " Remove 
the royal family from Berlin. Let the archives he carried to 
Potsdam — the town may make conditions with the enemy." Yet 
Frederic manceuvered so skillfully that the Russians did not at this 
time hazard an attack upon Berlin ; and he soon again was able to 
oppose them in the field with a formidable force. 

Meantime the British and Hanoverians, under prince Ferdinand en- 
gaged and completely defeated the French at Minden. The king 
of Prussia having learned that a Russian army was to join the 
Austrians in Silesia, in order to prevent this junction drew them 
into an engagement and defeated them. The main Russian army 
on learning this recrossed the Oder, but sent a corps into Bran- 
denburg, where they joined the Austrians and possessed themselves 
of Berlin. Frederic marched into Saxony and at Torqua defeated 
the Austrians under Ma shal Daun. By this victory nearly the 
whole of Saxony reverted to Prussia and Frederic established his 
winter quarters there. 



TROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 331 

The death of George II, which occurred about this time (1760) 
did not affect the alliance between England and Prussia; for 
George III, being determined to preserve his Hanoverian posses- 
sions continued in the same line of policy. The success of the 
British arms in America now caused to be formed a " Family Com- 
pact " between the kings of France and Spain, the result of which 
was war between Spain and England. Portugal, by refusing to 
join in the compact against England became also involved in this 
war. In Silesia the king of Prussia continued the war, while his 
brother, Prince Henry, commanded the forces in Saxony. The 
Russians and Austrians again, in 1761, took Berlin; and through- 
out this campaign the measures of Frederic were wholly defensive. 
Besides the capture of much sea-craft the British fleet took Belle- 
isle on the coast of France. 

In 1762 died the Empress Elizabeth, of Russia, the youngest 
daughter of Peter the Great, an event which relieved Frederic of 
an inveterate foe. Peter III, her nephew, succeeded, who instead 
of opposing allied himself with the Prussian hero, now called 
" Frederic the Great." Sweden also, having changed her policy, 
entered into alliance with him, so that he now found himself at 
liberty to turn his whole force against the Austrians. Another 
revolution, however, soon occurred in Prussia. By his numerous 
innovations in the internal affairs of the empire, as well as by his 
alliance with Frederic, Peter III had caused great discontent among 
his people. To the evils which thus surrounded him domestic dis- 
sensions "were added, and his empress Catharine, headed a conspir- 
acy of the disaffected from the clergy, nobility and army. This 
resulted in the dethronement, imprisonment and probable murder 
of Peter, and in the elevation to the throne of his wife, Catharine 
II. She, in regard to the war, did not follow the policy of either 
Elizabeth or her own husband; but, recalling the Russians from 
the service of Fredeii;, she preserved her nation in a strict neu- 
trality. 

In 1763, Frederic with increased energy, continued the war; 
having recovered Silesia, he invaded Bohemia and Franconia. At 
sea and in America the British were successful. Between England 
and France and Spain negotiations were entered into and a treaty 
concluded at Paris. By this treaty Great Britain received Canada 
in its whole extent, all the western side of the Mississippi, except 
New Orleans and its territories, the Islands of St. Pierre and 
Miquelon and Florida. In the partition of the West Indian Islands, 



332 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Great Britain made to Spain some concessions. The treaty of 
Paris having been concluded, another was soon after made, in the 
same year, at Hubertsburg, between Prussia, Austria and Saxony 
which ended the " Seven Years' War." By the terms of this 
treaty Silesia was finally ceded to Prussia; all conquests were re- 
stored; and each nation was confined to its boundaries as at the be- 
ginning of the war. 

By this terrible war not only was Europe devastated, but the de- 
pendencies in Europe and America of several of the powers engag- 
ed, which this extended it through, made the area of its devastations 
extend over more than half the circumference of a wide zone of the 
globe. And this awful destruction of human life and untold amount 
of suffering was brought about to satisfy the insane envy or the in- 
ordinate greed of a few monarchs, who had already more than they 
could use of the earth's surface and still coveted to possess more. 
If, as has been said, their multitudes folio wed them to the slaughter, 
and could have avoided doing so, while we sincerely pity their 
fate, we can only say that if they were sane they deserved it. All 
this which took place about the same time as the partition of Po- 
land shows plainly the spirit by which were actuated the dominat- 
ing races of Europe in that age and takes us down in effect to the 
American and French revolutions. 

Thus the power of empire wended its way westward, as accord- 
ing to that Scriptural prophecy in Dan. II, until manifestly show- 
ing the dominancy as situated, not now so much in the legs nor yet 
in the feet as in the toes, which were " part of iron and part of 
clay," or part monarchies and part democracies; part, too, per- 
taining to the old iron constitution of Catholicism and part to the 
more liberal and flexible systems of Protestantism. 

After the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the 
German empire, whereof we may consider Austria the exponent, 
no longer understood itself as being a fief of the See of Rome (as 
is indicated by the emperors no longer receiving their crown from 
the pope ) ; but as standing henceforth for the Roman empire prop- 
er; as standing, I say, for 'the Christian Roman empire, so far as 
now remained to the Christians of the empire of Constaninople, as 
the Exarchate, etc. But we have seen under a former head that 
after about the year 1000, or from the time of Robert, King of 
France the son oi Hugh Capet, — the last named of whom we un- 
derstand as identical with Otho II, emperor of Germany, — that 
from this period I say, the German and French polities and lines 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 333 

of rulers became distinct from each other in his two sons, Oth o 
III. and Robert I. respectively, with perhaps an idea generally 
implied of superiority of the German as the imperial polity per se 
of the empire of the West, thus leaving the French, in some slight 
sense, a provincial polity. This idea of superiority on the part of 
the German empire to France must needs have been understood 
during those four and a half centuries, which intervened between 
Robert, son of Hugh Capet, and Louis XI., who came to the throne 
of France in 1461. His father was Charles VII., who is said to 
have been crowned by the " Maid of Orleans," while France was 
in the possession of Henry V. of England. By which it is seen 
what a position, politically speaking, France was in when Constanti- 
nople was taken by the Turks. But from this time forward France 
revived perceptibly. Even Charles VII., after Henry V. of En- 
gland had died, and during the minority of his son Henry VI., may 
be said to have come into possession of the whole of the patrimony 
of his ancestors. In the latter part of his reign, too, the feudal 
policy, which had now for the four and a half centuries spoken of 
been found so injurious to the French people, and so effective in 
weakening the French government, began perceptibly to decline. 
Louis XL, his son and successor, in his attempts to humble his 
great vassals, produced a war, known by the name of " the War of 
the Public Weal," which, however, ended in a treaty favorable to 
the feudatories, a treaty which Louis soon infringed. On the death 
of Charles, King of Burgundy, with whom Louis had been at war, 
the latter added some of the Burgundian territory to the French 
dominions. Yet, as a King, Louis XL has the reputation of hav- 
ing been to the people at large a friend. Occasionally tyrannizing 
over them himself he allowed no one else to do so, and, it has been 
truly noticed, that one tryant has always been found a less evil 
than many. He was succeeded in 1483 by his son, Charles VIII, 
who married Anne, the duchess of Brittany, by which that province, 
the last of the great feudatories of France, ivas annexed to the 
crown. This result was achieved two years previous to the acces- 
sion of Henry VII to the English throne ; and after this time the En- 
glish made no invasion of France excepting that by Henry VIII. , 
which took place early in his reign and was ineffectual. 

At the epoch 1453, therefore, when the empire of Constantin- 
ople fell to the Turks, may be dated the beginning of an empire of 
France per se, I mean as independent of any implied idea of its 
being inferior to the German, or of its being subject to the En- 



334 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

glish, that is, strictly speaking to the Normans, whether feudatory, 
as in France, or monarchical, as in England. During the period 
spoken of, it is true, great energy had been put forth by France 
as in the crusades; but these enterprises largely, while they aroused 
and developed the spirit of the nation beyond its proper capacity, 
impoverished it, at the same time, to a like degree. 

France, therefore, from the epoch of the capture of Constan- 
tinople by the Turks, may, perhaps, be thought of as occupying 
the prophetico-political place of the German empire before that 
date ; that is, considered as to its historical line of rulers from that 
time France may be thought of as the left leg, and, considered ter- 
ritorially, as the left foot of Daniel's image of empire; while the 
right leg would be, from this time, the line of German emperors, 
m >st of whom pertained to the house of Austria, the right foot 
being Austria-Hungary, etc., considered territorially. The posi- 
tions of the feet being given, as here, indicate what nations are 
symbolized by the toes of the image; the " great toes," as some 
have thought, having been wonderfully energized in the recent cen- 
turies; — and also indicate our age now to be that of the " Son of 
Man " (See Dan. II., VII), that, in truth, " the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand." 

In order to trace the rise of the Dutch Republic, from which 
has arisen the kingdom of Holland, it is expedient for us to go 
back to the reign of the emperor Charles V. 

The old Netherlandish states or provinces, which were reckoned 
seventeen in number, pertained to the old German empire, and, at 
the time of the accession of Charles V., to the house of Austria. 
The death of Ferdinand, king of Spain, in 1516, was followed by 
the elevation of his grandson Charles, then 16 years of age, to the 
throne of that kingdom. From his mother, Joanna, he inherited 
the kingdom of Spain; from his father, Philip, " the handsome," 
the territories of Austria and the Netherlands. About two years 
after Charles' elevation to the Spanish throne, the emperor Max- 
imillian left the imperial throne vacant, which presented an object 
of competition between Charles and Francis I. of France. Both 
of these presenting their claims the German electors chose Charles 
as being heir in the male line, and he was crowned under the title 
of Charles V. 

On the abdication of Charles in 1556 he resigned the sovereignty 
of Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip, his brother Ferdi- 
nand, as shown before, being elevated to the imperial throne in his 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 335 

stead. Philip married Queen Mary of England in 1555, and she 
dying in 1558 he returned to the continent, stopping in his posses- 
sions in the Netherlands to quell some disturbances. But these 
with the wars generally which had agitated the continent having 
been for the present pacificated by the treaty of Chateau Cambre- 
sis, Philip went into Spain. The Netherlands which had early re- 
ceived the doctrines of the reformation and in which the free 
government of their cities had tended to foster a spirit of liberty 
the Inquisitorial persecutions, now begun to be actively carried on 
by Spain, drove into open revolt. To suppress this rebellion and 
reduce the Dutch to submission the Duke of Alva was now sent by 
Philip with a considerable force of Spanish and Italian soldiers. 
The Dutch leaders in this revolt, the Counts Egmont and Horn, he 
caused to be executed. William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, who 
succeeded them in command, enlisted in the service a body of the 
German Protestants ; but possessing no fortified place and unable 
to bring Alva to an engagement he was compelled to disband his 
army. Executions now became so numerous as to drive many of 
the Dutch to expatriate themselves in England and elsewhere. 
Their privateers which had been used to dispose of prizes in the 
English ports, being, on the remonstrances of the Spanish court 
excluded, this caused them to seek a harbor of their own ; and 
they, accordingly, fortified the Brille, a port in Holland. The 
spirit of the Dutch now reviving and many towns taking sides 
with the Prince of Orange, Alva, foreseeing the duration and prob- 
able result of the war, petitioned to be recalled. This was granted, 
and, on his return to Spain, he is said to have boasted, that during 
the five years of his command in the Netherlands 18,000 heretics 
had suffered by the hands of the public executioners. 

Requesens, who was sent by Spain as governor in his stead, tried 
the efficacy of milder measures, but the principles of the reforma- 
tion had long ere this (1574) taken deep root, and the inhabitants 
smarting under their recent oppressions, continued the war with 
various success. 

The sovereignty of the Low countries the Dutch now offered to 
Elizabeth, queen of England, but she declined it though she aided 
them with men and money. At length, in 1576, a treaty, called 
the Pacification of Ghent, was concluded, which stipulated that all 
foreign troops should depart from the country and the inquisition 
in the Netherland's should be abolished. But Requesens, dying 
soon after, Don John of Austria, who succeeded him, violated the 



336 CREATOR AND COSMOS ,' OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

treaty and the war was renewed. Slight differences among the 
States had for some time prevented united action against the com- 
mon foe. The prince of Orange, now exerting himself, to produce 
unanimity for the common cause procured a meeting of deputies at 
Utrecht, from seven of the states : Holland. Zealand, Utrecht, Fries- 
land, G-roningen, Overyssel, and Guelderland, who signed the articles 
called " the Union of the Seven United Provinces." Such in the 
year 1579, was the beginning of the Dutch Republic. 

The States now doubting their abilitv to withstand the force 
which the duke of Parma, now in command of the Spanish forces 
was bringing against them again offered the sovereigntv to Eliza- 
beth, and, on her again refusing it, they offered it to the duke of 
Anjou, of the reigning family of France. The latter, however, 
they soon began to suspect of tampering with their liberties and he 
felt himself obliged to return to France, where he died shortly 
after. The prince of Orange endeavored all he possibly could to 
forward the interests of the states, but to the stroke of an assassin, 
instigated to the deed, it is said, by a reward offered by 
Philip, he finally yielded his life. His son, Maurice, was by the 
states appointed to succeed him as their general, in 158-4. Having 
reduced G-hent and Brussels, the duke of Parma besieged Antwerp, 
the richest and most populous city then in the Netherlands: and 
though the inhabitants made every effort to save the city they 
were finally obliged to capitulate. At the critical moment, 
when the States were about to sink, under their prolonged efforts, 
Elizabeth seeing her interests to be common with theirs, actively 
espoused their cause, and sent to their assistance a considerable 
force in command of the earl of Leicester, atthe same time sending 
Sir Francis Drake to attack the Spaniards in the West Indies, 
Leicester, failing to be as effectual, as was expected he should be, 
was recalled and Lord Willoughby appointed in his place. 

The duke of Parma was now obliged to lead his armv into France 
in aid of the Catholic party : and he was also required to direct the 
operation of the " Invincible Armada."' so that he had to leave the 
affairs in the Netherlands without his personal attention. On his 
death Mansfield was appointed his successor. Maurice of Nassau, 
at the head of the States' forces, now took possession of Breda, and 
with the aid of the English led by Sir Francis Vere, took possession 
of Gertruvdenberg and G-roningen. In 1594 they gained a decisive 
victory over the Spaniards at Turnhout in Brabant: and three years 
later, in 1597, the Dutch and English squadrons made a joint attack 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 337 

upon the Spanish fleet in the bay of Cadiz ; destroyed it, and took 
the city. All these results caused Philip to meditate peace, but as 
the States would not accept of any terms less than their independ- 
ence, he, therefore, concluded " to transfer his dominion " over 
the revolted provinces to his daughter, who was affianced to Albert 
duke of Austria. Albert, after his marriage, tried by persuasion and 
promise of lenity to have the provinces submit, but they, disregard- 
ing his promises, resolved upon liberty or death. He thereupon 
issued a decree prohibiting them from all intercourse with Spain, 
Portugal and the Spanish Netherlands. Though this was designed 
to injure their commerce it proved to have the contrary effect; it 
somewhat changed their courses of trade but did not diminish their 
profits. Both parties now having strengthened their forces engaged 
in battle at Newport, near Ostend, in West Flanders, in the year 
1600 in which the Dutch and English gained the victory. Albert, 
however, having again assembled a large army invested Ostend, 
which after a memorable siege of three years and a loss of 70,000 
men capitulated. But, meantime, Maurice, had captured seven 
towns in Spanish Flanders, which more than counterbalanced the 
loss. The court of Spain, after prosecuting the war two years 
longer, still retaining possession of the provinces, in 1606 treated 
with the seven which had seceded from Spain, " as an independent 
nation." There was hereupon concluded a peace of twelve years, 
during which civil and religious liberty was guaranteed to the 
States. Thus was the independence of Holland acknowledged by 
Spain before all the world one year before the first effectual set- 
tlement of the old thirteen States of North America. 

By the uncommon enterprise and perserving industry of the 
Dutch their commerce was extended and their wealth and terri- 
tories increased. During this period the East India company was 
established. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English navigator, sailing 
in the service of the Dutch, discovered the Hudson river. The 
Dutch settled the country around it and in 1614 founded New 
Amsterdam, afterwards called New York, and in 1615 Albany. 

I have related before how that in 1619 Frederic, elector palatine, 
was assisted in his war for the crown of Bohemia by 8000 
Dutch ; and how that in 1653 the Dutch were engaged in a 
war with Cromwell. In eleven years later, 1664, Charles II. en- 
gaged in hostilities against the Dutch, hoping, it is said, by this 
course to make himself popular with the English, whose jealousies 
were aroused on account of the competition of the Dutch in their 

22 



338 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOFIES, ETC. 

foreign trade. Secondly, he wished to be restored to his nephew, 
William prince of Orange, the office of Stadtholder, which had in 
the early days of the republic been acknowledged, but had recently 
been abolished. From her commerce, wealth and general industries 
Holland was now " a first rate power." John De Witt, who was 
leader of the republican party, had before entered into an alliance 
with France. The English, dispatching squadrons both to Africa 
and America, took possession of the Dutch settlements. It was 
now that New Amsterdam was taken from the Dutch and called 
New York, after the title of the admiral James duke of York, who 
was afterwards James II. Now was there waged, in 1667, a naval 
war between the Dutch and English with alternate success, until a 
treaty of peace was signed at Breda. 

During the years of the war between the English and Dutch 
Louis XIV., king of France, then a comparatively young man, is 
said to have been making some preparations to enlarge the French 
territory by the addition of the Spanish provinces on its northern 
frontier; and circumstances on the death of Philip IV. of Spain, 
had, he thought, left this an easy matter for him to accomplish. 
Notwithstanding his renunciation at his marriage, he now brought 
forward claims in right of his wife to the country he meant to con- 
quer, and accordingly entered the Spanish Netherlands at the head 
of 40,000 men. The Spanish authorities there being unprepared 
to resist, Louis took possession of the towns as he went along; 
and his rapid successes, alarming the other powers, the English, 
Dutch and Swedes united against him in a league, called "the 
Triple Alliance." Louis now consented to negotiate, and the am- 
bassadors of the different powers, meeting at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
formed a treaty of peace, which left to the French monarch the 
conquests he had made, but required him to relinquish all other 
claims upon the Spanish provinces. Upon Holland, however, 
Louis intended to revenge himself at some future time, on account 
of the part she had taken in obstructing his ambitious views, and 
to this end he sought to detach England from " the Triple Alliance." 
Louis, having effected this by a secret treaty he entered into with 
Charles II., then effected the same thing in the case of the Swedes ; 
and while the Dutch were flattering themselves in the prospect of 
the long peace which the terms of the Triple Alliance afforded 
them, invaded and conquered the duchy of Lorraine in order to 
make himself a safe passage into the united provinces. 

Charles II. now having obtained from his parliament means to 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 339 

carry ^ut his engagement with Louis, in a spirit as treacherous as 
that witn which he had entered into the engagement secretly with 
him, ordered an attack upon a Dutch merchant fleet coming from 
Smyrna with a cargo valued at two millions sterling; and, soon 
after, he openly declared war against Holland. 

Relying upon the faith of treaties the Dutch were not now pre- 
pared to even hold out against the combined French and English 
fleet and a French land force of 120,000 men ; nor was there unan- 
imity among the people arising from dissensions which existed 
among the political parties. William, Prince of Orange, who was 
cousin-german to Charles II., being the son of Mary, eldest daugh- 
ter of Charles I., king of England, was now appointed commander 
in chief of the Dutch army. Dewitt, a politician, whose party was 
now in the minority, sought to inspirit the states to some great naval 
operation, and acted nobly in equipping a fleet, which under Admiral 
de Ruyter came up with the combined English and French fleets, 
as they lay at anchor in Solbay. De Ruyter having attacked them 
obtained, however, no decisive advantage, and retreated to the coast 
of Holland, whither the combined fleet pursued him. Meanwhile 
the French army under Louis and Turenne, marched northward, 
reaching the Rhine ; Nemignen and Arnheim they took and be- 
sieged Utrecht. With his small army the Prince of Orange re- 
treated before them, and, in a few weeks, all the provinces, except 
Holland and Zealand, had submitted to the invader. The city of 
Amsterdam and the province of Holland were now so thoroughly 
aroused that all the able-bodied men were put under duty and pay. 
Ships were stationed in the harbor and the Dutch to save the city 
opened their sluices and canals, consigning their villages and fields 
to destruction. But while preparing to resist they yet sought for 
peace; and finding their overtures rejected they, with as remark- 
able fortitude as the Tyrians displayed against the Babylonians 
under Nebuchadnezzar II., determined to leave their native land, if 
they could not defend it, and to settle in America. The people, 
in a frenzied state of mind, feeling the necessity of an acknowl- 
edged chief, and blaming the two De Witts, by wh6se influence the 
office of Stadtholder had been abolished, now put these two men to 
death and invested the prince of Orange with that dignity. About 
this time the combined fleet had advanced to the coast of Holland, 
having on board the army designed to complete its conquest; but 
the Dutch were given occasion to thank an overruling Providence, 
when it was carried back to sea and prevented by storm from land- 
ing the army. 



340 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Now the German emperor, the king of Spain and the elector of 
Brandenburg, perceiving the grasping ambition of Louis, formed a 
coalition against him to aid the states. The Prince of Orange re- 
took Naerden, and, joining his forces with those of the emperor 
under Montecuculi, they besieged and took Bonn. They then sub- 
dued the principal part of the electorate of Cologne, thus cutting 
the communication between France and the United Provinces, and 
compelling the French to evacuate their conquests and retreat. In 
the following year the parliament of England compelled Charles II. 
to renounce his unprincipled and disgraceful French alliance and 
make peace with Holland. He had, however, attained his object, 
especially in the making of his nephew stadtholder and in the ac- 
quisition of plunder. 

But the French monarch, still continuing the war, in the year 
1674 brought into the field four armies, and began the campaign by 
the subjugation of Franche Compte. At the head of another 
French army the Prince of Conde encountered the prince of Orange 
at Seneffe in Brabant and fought an indecisive battle. The French 
under Turenne were more successful against the Germans. They 
conquered the palatinate wherein great cruelty is laid to their 
charge. 

It is said that Louis, now beginning to fear the effect of the com- 
bination against him, bribed the king of England to prorogue his 
parliament, lest it might necessitate him to enter the confederacy 
against himself; and this incident may tend to show what sort of 
characters these two men, Louis XIV and Charles II, were? 

The imperial general, Montecuculi, was, in the next campaign, 
opposed to Turenne and by his skill prevented the French from 
making much progress. Turenne, however, soon lost his life by a 
cannon ball, Louis being thus deprived of his ablest general. 

Chiefly through the skill of Du Quesne the French were now 
victorious on the ocean. In 1678 a treaty of peace was signed at 
Nimeguen, " the Dutch retaining their former territories." Con- 
template, therefore, the immense amount of blood and treasure 
and sufferings implied in the six years of this war, — and for what 
purpose? The Dutch at the end, retaining their own territories, 
to despoil them of which Louis had undertaken the war ! 

At this time, 1684, died Colbert, the prime minister of Louis, 
who had protected and patronized the Huguenots ; and was re- 
placed by Louvois, who, being a bigot, incited Louis to religious 
persecution by which he revoked the edict of Nantes. This Edict, 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 341 

published by Henry IV in 1598, granted to the French Protestants 
the enjoyment of their religion and the right to hold public offices, 
rights which before had been denied them. Now, it is said, the 
Protestants being commanded to declare themselves converted by 
an appointed day, then, of those who refused, the leaders were 
broken on the wheel, while the common people were hanged. It 
is said too that the penalty of death was enacted against all who 
attempted to emigrate, yet that, notwithstanding, fifty thousand 
families abandoned their country in 1685. This statement of a 
large emigration of people from the country at this time is probably 
correct ; they expatriated themselves rather than recant. All this 
is probable from the general notice that the power of Louis began 
henceforth to decline, by reason of the amount of skilled labor 
which France had lost in the emigration and of the hatred which 
the expatriated Protestants infused into the hearts of the neighbor- 
ing peoples against the existing French government. 

Of the princes of the German empire a league was formed at 
Augsburg for preventing the further encroachments of France ; and 
with them Holland, Spain, and finally England united. Louis pre- 
pared vigorously to withstand this powerful combination of ene- 
mies; and having an army in the field first made an effectual move. 
The dauphin invested and soon took Philipsburg on the Rhine. 
The French now proceeding to overrun and devastate the Palatin- 
ate found ultimately this mode of warfare to be not for their in- 
terest, as it raised for them many new enemies and made the old 
ones more inveterate. In 1691, Louis was victorious in Italy over 
the duke of Savoy, and his general, Luxembourg, triumphed over 
the Dutch and Spaniards on the plains of Fleures. In his naval 
operations he was this year also successful ; among other feats his 
admiral, Tourville, having defeated the English and Dutch fleet off 
Beachy head and made a descent upon the English coast. 

In the next campaign William, of Orange, now King of England, 
who, on account of the settlement of British affairs, was unable to 
take an active part in the preceding campaign, now resumed com- 
mand of the English and Dutch forces in Flanders. Beyond the 
capture of Mons by the French, and their arms being successful on 
the side of Spain, there was in this campaign no decided advan- 
tage obtained on either side. Louis in the following spring 
(1692), took Namur after siege; Luxembourg being stationed so 
as to prevent the English King from assisting the besieged. The 
French fleet were defeated by the English off Cape La Hogue; and 
William defeated their army in a battle at Steinkirk. 



342 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

In the campaign of 1693, the imperial forces, under command of 
the prince of Baden, obtained a victory over the Turks who were 
now in alliance with the French: but in the following year (1694; 
the Turks recaptured Widdin, took Belgrade and possessed them- 
selves of all Upper Hungary. The French under Luxembourg 
meanwhile surrounded King William, who with his army occupied 
the town of Neerwinden. Long and obstinate was the contest 
here, which ultimated in a dearly bought victory for the French; 
who afterwards also took Charleroi. The French forces in Spain 
under Marshal Noailles, and in Piedmont mder Catinat, prosecuted 
the war with success. With the exception of the recapture of 
Namar by the English king no event of great military importance 
took place during the three remaining campaigns of this war. At 
length, in 1697, by the mediation of Charles XI, now king of 
Sweden, the parties all expressing themselves desirous of peace, a 
congress assembled at Ryswick to arrange terms. Of this treaty 
the basis was the restoration of all places taken during the war ; 
William being acknowledged by France as King of England. 

Shortly after this treaty was signed, but in the same year, a bat- 
tle was fought at Zenta between the imperial forces under Prince 
Eugene, of Savoy, and the Turks commanded by the Sultan, Mus- 
tapha II. The Austrians here obtained the victory with great loss 
to the Turks in dead and wounded and those drowned in trying to 
escape. By this event peace was restored between the Ottoman and 
German empires, a treaty to this effect being signed at Carlowitz. 

This general war, therefore, which may be said to have lasted 
from the league formed at Ausburg, in 1686, to the peace signed 
at Ryswick, in 1697, or actively for nine or ten years at least, at 
the expense of an untold amount in blood suffering and treasure, 
was ended, as we see so many other long wars were " by the res- 
toration of all places taken during the war." What insanity, what 
wickedness on the part of those monarchs, who wantonly brought 
them on to gratify their own whims and vanities. There certainly 
appears not in those monarchs, who caused such useless and de- 
structive wars, and who should have been examples of sober godli- 
liness in word and deed to their peoples, that self-denying charac- 
ter of the Christ of whom they prof essed to be the followers. Did 
they not in professing to follow him, in their works deny him, 
being disobedient and self-willed, and to such a self-denying , n:l 
actively godly life, as His Gospel calls for, utter strangers? But 
the treaty of Ryswick had hardly been concluded when there be- 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 343 

gun, in the same year, " the thirteen years war of the Spanish suc- 
cession." This arose from Charles II, the then ruling monarch of 
Spain, having no child who should become heir to his throne, and 
in order to preserve " the balance of power," and not allow Spairi 
into the possession of either of the claimants for it. Louis XIV, 
the elector of Bavaria, and the Emperor Leopold, having each his 
claim, England, Holland and France formed a "treaty of parti- 
tion," dividing the territories of the Spanish monarchy among the 
different claimants. To this " treaty of partition," however, the em- 
peror refused to accede. Through the influence of the pope, Charles 
II, then willed his kingdom of Spain to Philip, duke of Anjou, second 
son of the dauphin, who on the death of Charles, by the consent of 
Louis and his desire to aggrandize his own family, was crowned with 
the title of Philip V. The German emperor, dissatisfied with this 
result, soon made himself master of much Spanish territory. En- 
gland and Holland, having to no purpose endeavored to arrange an 
amicable adjustment, entered into a treaty with the German empe- 
ror, called the " Grand Alliance," whose objects we have seen be- 
fore in treating of the rise of Prussia to the position of a kingdom. 

On the death of James II, the deposed king of England, which 
occurred at this time at Paris, Louis XIV. acknowledged his son as 
king of England, and gave him the title of James III. This gave 
such offense to William that he recalled his English embassador 
from France and entered with ardor into preparations for war. 
While thus engaged William died, but Anne, who succeeded him on 
the English throne, continued in his line of foreign policy, and on 
the same day, England, Holland and the German empire — the 
German princes generally being in this league, — declared war against 
France. This war begun in 1702, was ended on the peace of 
Utrecht in 1713, with the accession to the Dutch republic of the 
provinces of Luxembourg, Namur and Charleroi. This is enough 
to state here as to the result, all the terms of the treaty having 
been stated under a former head. 

In five years after the peace of Utrecht that is in 1713, we 
find Holland engaging in the " Quadruple Alliance," which, hav- 
ing in view the preservation of " the balance of power," provided 
that the empire of Germany should renounce all claims to Spain 
and its colonies; and that the king of Spain should give up all pre- 
tensions to the provinces of that kingdom already ceded ; and, 
among other provisions, that the duke of Savoy should exchange 
Sicily for Sardinia. 



344 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

The Spanish court, having refused the dictation of this alliance, 
a declaration of war ensued, when Philip V, alarmed at the conse- 
quences of resistance, dismissed his prime minister and acceded to 
the terms of the quadruple alliance. 

After the accession of the house of Brunswick to the throne of 
England in 1714, the kings of this house being the hereditary 
rulers of Hanover, there continued, if not a perpetual alliance, y«t 
a state of peace and mutual sympathy between Great Britain and 
the Dutch United Provinces, which has tended to their mutual ad- 
vancement politically and religiously. The fact of their Stadtholder, 
William of Orange, having attained to the position of King of 
Great Britain, had the effect ultimately of augmenting their politi- 
cal importance and the number of their territorial divisions from 
seven to ten. 

The present kingdom of Italy was established by Victor Emman- 
uel, king of Sardinia. This man seems to have been of a like 
liberal mind, religiously and politically speaking, as was his father 
Charles Albert. The latter in 1848 gained the confidence of the 
Italians generally by having given to his own Sardinian subjects a 
liberal constitution. In 1849 he abdicated in favor of his son Vic- 
tor Emmanuel, who, as we know, turned out to be a man of consid- 
erable natural ability and energy. The present King Humbert 
appears also to be aiming to be of a truly patriarchal character to 
his people. There is much good for all such men to do. 

Prophetic Reference of Rev. XIII., 11-18, to the Reformed 

Systems. 

Under a former head I have shown this prophecy to have been 
directly fulfilled in the papacy in its connection with the Franco- 
German and the Anglo-Saxon Norman monarchies : And now it is 
very plain that these are the same continued in Protestantism, that 
is, the same continued with their religious polities changed. The 
word reform, which means to change a thing as to form rather 
than as to substance, to set the same thing forth in a somewhat 
different way, will help to explain the present connection. 
What the Protestant reformation did principally was that it 
changed variously the polities of those nations which came out 
from the religion of Rome ; but as that religion was much inter- 
woven into the State polities, during the period of the pope's ac- 
knowledged supremacy over those states, it can be seen that the 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 345 

polities both civil and religious of the nations in which the refor- 
mation took place had to undergo a considerable change. The 
civil polities the reforming nations produced made them nationally 
independent of Rome; their newly formed systems of religion were 
patterned after the Roman Catholic system whence they came out. 
The papal Exarchate and the Franco-German and Anglo-Saxon Nor- 
man monarchies being images, more or less, of the Christian 
Roman empire system at Constantinople, then the Protestant re- 
formed systems of church and state polity being images of the 
former are images of images of the latter. 

But the Protestant reformation was principally a religious change. 
The symbolic prefiguration as seen by the prophet coming up out 
of the earth (Rev. XIII., 11.) means that the change originates in 
or from the church; the earth, land, island, etc., in the prophecy 
meaning the church. As I have explained under the former head 
it refers primarily to the pope, considered also as a temporal sov- 
erign, that is, considered as supreme over church and state ; and, 
secondarily, it refers to any man who unites in his person supremacy 
over church and state, as acknowledged in dominion and sover- 
eignty. This symbolic prefiguration has two horns " like as a 
lamb:" that is, the dual dominion of church and state united in 
one person. But "he speaks as a dragon," which for one thing 
may indicate the profundity of his theological learning as well as 
his (serpentine) knowledge of worldly affairs. The lamb being a 
symbol of Christ, he having two horns like as a lamb indicates him 
to be a professor of the religion of Christ, and speaking as a dra- 
gon that he is not a true exponent of Christ's life and doctrine as 
set forth in the Gospel. There is self determinateness and absolut- 
ism of character implied in the symbolic prefiguration ; there is 
also a character worse than hypocritical, for while he appears 
somewhat like a lamb he speaks as a dragon ; while he appears out- 
wardly as Christ he is really Anti-Christ. As the reformed state 
and church systems are images of the Papal Exarchate, so each 
Protestant sovereign, comprising in himself state and church power, 
is an image of the Exarch-bishop, at least so far as his possessing 
the dual sovereignty is concerned; and so the symbolic prefigura- 
tion, in Rev. XIII, 11, stands for each. But this does not imply 
that such sovereign may not deny himself, deny the world, and live 
and act out the life and spirit of Jesus Christ. There is no reason 
why he should not live the life of self-denial and active godliness. 
By their works they are to be known 



346 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Yerse 12 : " And he exerciseth all the power of the first being 
before him, and causeth the earth and them that dwell therein to 
worship the first being whose deadly wound was healed.' ' ''And 
he exercises all the power of the first, etc., before him" means 
that he exercises the same kind of power, spiritual and temporal; 
He exercises this before him (evcforwv, literally before the face or in 
the view of) means that he exercises his power contemporaneously 
with him, with his knowledge but independently of him. Though 
there were no telephones in use at the outbreak of the reformation 
yet so intimately was Rome connected with all parts of Europe 
that its first sound was heard therein from the heart of Germany. 
The head of the church was kept well informed, especially as to 
spiritual affairs, throughout his vast empire. In 1401 Sawtry, a 
preacher, was burnt to death in England, and in 1415-16 John Huss 
and Jerome did with the Papal sanction suffer the same death in 
Bohemia, because they maintained the doctrines just before prom- 
ulgated by Wickliffe. So in 1518-19 the See of Rome was kept 
well informed of Luther's proceedings, from the time of his first 
opposition to Tetzel to his excommunication by the pope in 1521. 
Should not Luther's voice have been meantime stilled in death had 
he not had a protector in the elector of Saxony? All the Roman 
Catholic ministry throughout Christendom were the pledged or 
sworn liege men of the pope: he, therefore, ruled everywhere 
wherein their influence was exercised. The reformers, therefore, 
might be said to have done all they did before the face of the 
exarch-bishop from the start to the full accomplishment of the 
reformation and from that day to this in their reformed systems of 
government, in their church and State sovereignties (which are 
after the manner and spirit of his own exarch-bishoprick) they 
have carried on their own governments openly, independently and 
above board, in his sight, " before his face." "And (he) causeth 
the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first being 
whose deadly wound was healed." This, under the former head, 
referred to the Roman empire at Constantinople, but in this case it 
refers to the exarch-bishoprick at Rome. The system of the Papal 
exarchate must, therefore, in the interval between Pepin and 
Charlemagne and the Protestant reformation have had some re- 
markable diminution, loss or decay in some sense and by some 
means ; from which condition it was recovered in some sense or by 
some person or means. 

We have seen under a former head that the Carlovingian dynasty 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 347 

succeeded in France to the Merovingian, which last named was the 
first German dynasty recorded to have ruled in old Gaul. Of the 
Carlovingian dynasty Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, who was 
son of Pepin D'Heristal, mayor of the palace, was the first crowned 
king. He was crowned king of France, not by the pope but by the 
bishop of Mentz. He it was who conquered by his French arms 
from the Lombards the exarchate of Ravenna, and gave it to the 
pope, making him thereby a temporal sovereign, while the 
kings of France of that line were recognized as Patricians of 
Rome. This gift was confirmed to the pope by Charlemagne, the 
son and successor of Pepin in the year 774, while the latter is said 
to have been himself crowned king of Lombardy by the pope. 
While it does not appear clear that it was with " the iron crown 
of Lombardy " that Charles was now crowned or with a crown 
made of some other material, it is nevertheless, said by some (al- 
though other historians do not notice it) that he was crowned by 
the pope king of Lombardy and was recognized not only as king of 
France but as Patrician of Rome besides. But when Charles was 
crowned at Rome, in the year 800, pope Leo then used " the golden 
crown of the empire," which doubtless he had made for the occa- 
sion; but had, as would seem from what some say, to steal it on to 
his head as Charles was kneeling in the act of prayer, Charles 
being altogether too modest a man to allow himself to be adorned 
with such an appendage, he being, as to simplicity of life and 
manners, a true descendant of the Teutons. But pope Leo appears 
to have had it all in his own way this time, for he took Charles 
unawares, while he was deeply engaged in the act of devotion, 
and placed the golden crown upon his head. Charles could not 
then, be he ever so modest, deny that he had been crowned. On 
this occasion Charles confirmed to the pope all the gifts of his 
father and himself before given. 

But in the interval of four Generations of the Carlovinsrian 
dynasty, that is from the death of Charlemagne to the downfall of 
the dynasty in the time of the son of Charles " the simple;" in 
this interval, I say, owing to the inability or indisposition of some 
of those kings to prevent it, most of the territories of the exarchate 
were lost to the pope. For seventy years before this transfer of 
dynasty took place, the sovereignty of Italy, — though of course 
only nominal, — was the object of contest between its most power- 
ful and ambitious nobles; and, besides, its northern parts were 
desolated by the Hungarians, while its southern coasts were subject 



348 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

to the inroads of the Saracens, who had made themselves masters 
of Sicily. 

Of the Italian nobles the dukes of Spoleto and Tuscany and the 
marquises of Pavia, Susa and Friuli were the most powerful. The 
extensive duchy of Benevento had been divided into the princi- 
palities of Benevento, Salerno and Capua. 8 * Calabria and Apulia 
were still subject to the emperor of Constantinople, while Naples 
and Amalfi were republics under his protection." " Rome was sub- 
ject to the pope," with somewhat more of the exarchate yet at- 
taching. 

It was at this time that the pope earnestly sought the assistance 
of Otho or Hugh the gre it the now acting emperor of the German 
empire in the stead of Louis V, son of Charles the simple. The act- 
ing emperor now marched into Italy and received at Milan the iron 
crown of the Lombards, and at Rome, from the hand of the pope, 
the golden crown of the empire. He thus received in his person the 
title of emperor of the Romans, which before this had been extinct 
for about seventy years." Thus had a " deadly wound" been 
given to the sovereignty of the exarch-bishop of Rome and to that 
of his firstborn son, the Carlovingian dynasty; and thus was this 
head, again wounded, healed by the acting king for the last of the 
old dynasty, but reckoned the first real king of the new. If there- 
construction of the Western empire by the first two Carlovingian 
dynasts and the pope was called the Roman empire revived in the 
west, this operation of Otho the great in relation to the pope, may 
be called the Roman empire of the west restored in 962-989. 

Otho the great began the subjugation of the empire by compel- 
ling the nobles, who largely in that age, imbued with the feudal 
spirit, aspired to independence, to submit to his authority; and by 
balancing their power in conferring upon the clergy the rights of 
temporal princes. When he entered Italy in 961 the most powerful 
prince he had to encounter was Berenger II., who as well as his 
father before him, was styled " king of Italy." His father, Beren- 
ger I., from being duke of Friuli was in 924 styled king of Italy, 
Otho subdued Berenger II. and his kingdom, deposed the licentious 
pope John II. who had favored Berenger, and placed Leo VIII. in 
the papal chair. From the licentiousness which characterized some 
of the popes of this age, Otho, deeming it necessary that the civil be 
superior to the ecclesiastical power, revived an old claim put for- 
ward by some of the Carlovingian dynasts, namely, " that the em- 
peror should have the power of nominating the pope and of giving 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 349 

investiture to bishops." But not long after his return to France 
his Italian subjects rebelled, and on the death of Leo VIII., con- 
tested the emperor's right to nominate his successor. He, how- 
ever, by the force of his arms, compelled them to submission in 
964; after which (he having rendered Bohemia tributary, " compel- 
ling its inhabitants to receive Christianity," and having defeated 
the Hungarians as well as the Danes in the beginning of his re- 
gency) the remainder of the days of that energetic regent, Hugh the 
great, was tranquil. 

Louis V., whom I find to be identical with Charles " the Simple 
but whom on preceding pages I have occaisonally spoken of in 
accordance with the language of the historical Romance as " son" 
of this Charles, and who had for his wife a daughter of Athelstan 
the Anglo-Saxon King, died, as near as I can fix it by a comparison 
of the histories, in 996 A. D. and was succeeded in Germany by his 
son Eudes, i e., Otho III. and in France by his son Robert; and it 
is with these two brothers the two distinct lines of rulers for France 
and Germany begin, in round numbers at 1000 A. D. 

The interval between 754, when Pepin gave to the pope the sov- 
ereignty of the exarchate, and 964, when Otho the great restored 
to him what may be said to have been restored of it, comprehended 
a period of 210 years, during which, with the exception of about 
seventy years, the popes may be thought of as having administered 
the government of most of the exarchate. After this the attainment 
of the papal chair became an object of great ambition by rival can- 
didates, and after the year 1000 the Papacy waxed so great as to 
become the most powerful monarchy on the earth. 

It can, however, be now easily understood from the foregoing 
what was the nature of " the deadly wound; " what the nature of 
the [object wounded ; and what is to be understood by the wound 
being " healed." In speaking of the reformed powers, who 
" caused the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first 
being whose deadlv wound was healed," it refers to the heads or 
leaders of the reformed nations, which ultimately attained to church 
and State systems of government of that order, during a certain 
stage of their progress. Luther, the leader of the reformation in 
Germany, was at first a monk and had, as a matter of course, to 
have pledged obedience to the pope of Rome; and even after 
he had started in his reforming career he remained for some time 
in submissive obedience to the pope. It is generally the Lutheran 
doctrines which are established in the governmental systems of 



350 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

church and State in Germany. John Calvin also whose doctrines, 
as distinguished from the Lutheran, the other main branches of the 
Protestants have followed and which have been established in the 
State and church system of Great Britain, was originally a Catholic 
priest in the enjoyment and use of a benefice. Of course he, as 
Luther, had pledged obedience to the See of Rome, and to the 
doctrines, rites and rules of the Roman Catholic Church, and had 
inculcated the same obedience to others so long as he remained in 
connection with that system himself. In fact most of the leading 
reformers on the continent had arisen from being Catholic priests 
or monks or teachers of some sort in that faith and must needs 
have pledged themselves to obedience to the pope and church at 
the start and inculcated this obedience to their people so long as 
they remained in the system and in obedience to their pledge. And 
so Henry VIII., the leading reformer in England, who came to the 
throne in 1509, in twelve years later, or in 1521, published his 
" Defense of the Seven Sacraments," for which he was titled by 
the pope "Defender of the Faith." And although he separated 
from Cardinal Wolsey, on account of his disagreement with him 
relative to the spiritual supremacy, as early as the year 1525, yet 
it was not till 1531 that he openly proclaimed his own spiritual su- 
premacy. He lived yet sixteen years and all his life he professed 
adherence to the Catholic Church and punished as heretics those 
who dissented from its doctrines, as well as those who, after he 
had assumed it publicly, dissented from his assumption of spiritual 
supremacy. All these reformers in their beginning, inculcated re- 
ligious obedience to the Papacy, in a like way as the pope himself 
and his ministry in the Exarchate inculcated civil obedience to the 
empire at Constantinople during the two centuries, 553-753. In 
the Protestant reformation we are considering principally a religi- 
ous change or transfer ; in the change of the Exarchate from the 
Goths to the Eastern Empire in 553 and from the Goths or Eastern 
empire to the pope, through the medium of Pepin in 754, we are 
considering principally a civil change. There was obedience to the 
existing powers inculcated in both cases; first civil obedience to the 
emperor was inculcated to the people of the Exarchate and the 
Latin subjects generally of the eastern empire by the pope and his 
ministry; and, secondly, religious obedience to the pope and the 
Roman Catholic Church was inculcated to their peoples by those who 
ultimately became the Protestant reformers in the early part of 
their career: So that these latter did cause the earth (the church) 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 351 

and them that dwelt therein to worship the first being whose deadly 
wound was healed. By the " Carlovi \jian dynasty " was the 
first deadly wound, which Rome received from the Goths, Hunns, 
and Vandals, completely healed; by the " Conradian dynasty" 
was Rome's second wound (now inflicted by her own Italians) 
healed. 

Verse 13th: " And he doeth great wonders so that he maketh 
fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men." 
Now are we getting into the age of gunpowder. In our present 
application of the prophecy to the history the reader must fix 
his mind upon those new chiefs of church and state with their es- 
tablished and statepaid ministries, which were yet nominally sub- 
ject to Rome, but would soon act for themselves independently 
of it. 

By the English under Edward III, in the battle of Cressy in 
1346, artillery was first used. The invention of gunpowder is as- 
cribed to Swartz, a monk of Cologne; butRoger Bacon, an English 
philosopher of an earlier day, in a work he wrote on Alchemy, 
describes the mixture and its explosive force. Small arms, such as 
the carbine and matchlock, did not come into use until about a 
century after the battle of Cressy. The knights regarded shooting 
as a barbarous mode of attacking an adversary ; but experience has 
proved the invention of fire-arms to have rather tended to the civil- 
ization of the world. Heavy ordnance, costing labor and money in 
its transportation, an advantage not before had was given to the 
invaded over the invader, which tended to keep nations peaceful. 
The steel-guarded giant, who, by his physical strength, could deal 
stronger blows than his neighbors, by this new mode of warfare 
came soon to lose that prestige to which his moral courage and in- 
tellectual ability afforded him no claim. The results of war came 
to be more easily calculated and disputes to be more often settled 
by peaceable means. The inventions which increase the hazard of 
those who fight tend to diminish the number of wars, as they make 
people more disposed to settle their difficulties peaceably as by arbi- 
tration, mediation or the like. These new inventions were well in- 
troduced at the time of the opening of the reformation, by which the 
age of protestantism may be said to be an advance towards civiliza- 
tion, as appears in so many ways since its rise contemporaneously 
with the discovery of America. The population of Christendom, 
in any age since the reformation, has had more physical and mental 
energy; has been as a whole, better fed and better clothed and 



352 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

better disciplined, than has its population as a whole, in any Chris- 
tian age before it. 

But the prophecy, doubtless, has rather reference to the artillery 
from the pulpit, the spiritual artillery, if we may so speak, than to 
either the Greek fire as spoken of in the case of the former applica- 
tions of it, or to the modern ordinance and small arms, as in this 
latter. For if it be asserted in explanation of this prophecy that 
the Catholic church, through its constituted ministry, can produce 
miracles, such as the bringing down of literal fire from the air in 
people's sight; then it is folly to deny that miracle-working ability 
to the Protestant hierachies also, since they are but reformed 
systems of the Koman Catholic, having derived their ordination, to 
which some of them attach great importance, therefrom. If, there- 
fore, the power to work miracles be asserted to pertain to the one 
for certain reasons they give, it may, for the same reasons exactly 
be asserted to pertain to the other. 

Verse 14th: " And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by 
those miracles, which he had power to do in the sight of the being: 
Saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an 
image to the being, which had the wound by a sword and did 
live." The word here translated "miracles" is, in the original 
" signs," the same word being in the Gospels also often translated 
miracles. If the power to work miracles exist it appears it can be 
used for a bad purpose as well as for a good one, that is, it may be 
used well or badly abused; for we find Paul in 2nd Thessalonians, 
ch. 2, speaking of the " powers and signs and lying wonders,'' 
wherewith, in all deceivableness, Antichrist should seek to establish 
his prestige over the minds of the people. These signs, then, ac- 
cording to our present application of the prophecy, the constituted 
hierarchy of each 6f those systems, which were just coming out in 
the reformation, had power to do contemporaneously with the 
exarch-bishop of Rome ; before his face, in the sight of his minis- 
try, and independently of them. The prophecy as yet, however, 
contemplates those hierarchies that are proceeding to reformation, 
rather within than without the Roman Catholic system ; so that 
those signs and wonders are rather done within the old system, by 
those intending to come out than without it by them after they had 
come out from it ; for continuing it represents him as " saying to 
them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the 
being that had the wound by a sword and did live." 

Here each leader or head of the new systems addresses particu- 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 353 

larly those of his own branch of the reformed faith, and advises 
them to organize a system of church and state polity so correspond- 
ing to the Papal that it might be called an image thereof. It indi- 
cates a second stage of the progress of the reformation, the first 
being really within the Roman Catholic church. It indicates the 
course pursued by the German reformers, when, for example, the 
elector of Saxony determined to sever all connection of his 
government with the see of Rome, and organize a governmental 
polity of his own independent of it; and when, as early as the year 
1527, the elector, John Frederic, ordered a code of laws relating to 
the contemplated form of ecclesiastical government, the method of 
public worship, the rank, offices and revenues of the priesthood, 
etc., to be drawn up by Luther and Melancthon and promulgated 
by heralds throughout his dominions: "The example of the elec- 
tor of Saxony was followed by all the principal States of Germany 
that embraced the reformation : " — As well as it indicates the course 
pursued by the reformers in Britain, when the independent church 
of England began to be formed, after Henry VIII. assumed to him- 
self spiritual supremacy in 1531. It is true that Henry VIII. 
always professed to be a Roman Catholic, while he lived ; but it is 
nevertheless true that from the time that he assumed spiritual 
supremacy over his own dominions the English church system be- 
gan to be formed, which eventually, as to forms and doctrines, so 
resembled the Roman Catholic Church system, as with the Lutheran, 
to have been called in the prophecy an ecxmv or image of it. Of 
course all the reformed systems must originally have been patterned 
more or less after the Roman Catholic system ; but they could be 
resemblances of that only as to some things ; the Lutheran church 
and State systems of Germany and Scandanavia and the Calvanistic 
church and State system of England, — but especially the latter, — 
being the complete images of the Papal church and State system of 
sovereignty. And now being images of the latter they must needs 
have been images of images of the Christian Roman Empire at Con- 
stantinople of which the Papal sovereignty was an image. 

The word etmtv denotes a physical image or figure, something 
that has or has not been produced by the ingenuity or handicraft 
of man. It has a figurative sense also, but here it has its literal 
signification. For the new establishment clerical ranks with their 
habits, church rates and rituals, rites and ceremonies, etc., all had 
to be invented or defined and determined, and many of them were 
introduced with great parliamentary debate and popular opposition 

23 



354 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

in England during many successive years. The two or three creeds 
with the two sacraments and some other doctrines of the church of 
Kome the Protestant churches retained. 

The reformed church systems were completed gradually; that 
of England during the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth being 
brought to about the same state at which it still remains ; but on 
principles considerably different from those established by Henry 
VIII. , namely on the principles of Calvin, as distinct on the one 
side from those of Rome, and on the other from those of Luther. 

Verse 15th: "And he had power to give life to the image of the 
being, that the image of the being should both speak, and cause 
that as many as would not worship the image of the being should be 
killed." The explanation I have given of this verse under the for- 
mer head applies here also. It simply means that those systems 
of church and State government, with their monarchs as supreme, 
in dual power, at their head, were established by law in Germany 
and England; that such privileges as the protection in life and 
liberty with freedom of competition in business, etc., were implied 
in them to those citizens who would obey them and live in accord- 
ance with their requirements ; but that, on the contrary, they 
implied and expressed such penalties for disobedience and non-con- 
formity as imprisonment, torture, confiscation, a prohibition of 
competition in business, death, etc. 

"And he had power to give life," etc. Although the word here 
translated "life" is in the original "breath," still life is in this 
connection a good translation. His having " power to give life " 
points, doubtless, to the recognized supreme head of the church 
and State in the system, then, to his deputies or ministers. The 
persons and institutions favored by him possessed the most life, 
energy, enterprise. The passage may here refer also to an occult 
power. When the reformed church and State systems became fully 
established they enforced obedience to them and compliance with 
their requirements no less effectually than the Roman Catholic 
authorities were accustomed to do in the case of their own. 

" And cause as many as would not worship the image of the 
being should be killed." The system of church and state once es- 
tablished as the law of the land, there is no other way left to the 
citizen than that of conformity, compliance, obedience to that law. 
There is here a unity of government, in a unity of law ; there must 
needs be a unity of conformity, of obedience, to that law, to that 
government, let that law and government be of what character they 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 355 

may, else there is outlawry, rebellion on the part of the citizen. 
This must be so as long as a law is established and in force in a 
country. Punishment may not arise to the nonconformist or the 
disobedient so much from the will of the actually existing gov- 
ernors as from the terms of the law itself. This put in force 
necessitates the cruelty to the nonconforming. The unity of 
church and state, established as the law of the land, the citizen has 
no free will ; never comes to full growth mentally as in a free 
democracy; always remains a child, whose part is to follow, to 
obey ; not to exercise his own private judgment on matters whereon 
the law has decided ; and, in speaking concerning such things, to 
express no judgment of his own, which may be contrary to or at 
variance with that established law. Hence is seen how necessary 
it is that legislators should exercise great deliberation and self- 
denial, in the framing and enactment of laws; that they should 
enact no law which is not for the best interests, mentally, physically, 
morally and religiously of the whole people,' whom the law is de- 
signed to effect and, further, that they should enact no law which 
might effect injuriously any tribe of mankind which are not likely 
to effect the enacters or their people otherwise, that might be con- 
sidered injurious, than in a fair and free competition for sub- 
sistence in the ordinary lines of business. The same God and 
father of all brings into existence all human beings and yet some 
legislators, not reflecting that they owe their own existence to God 
to whom all things really belong, act so unjustly as by their acts 
or enactments to enslave those human beings while yet unconscious 
in their cradles, or yet unborn. Men should be full souled, noble- 
hearted, full-breasted with love to their kind; and speaking in re- 
lation to this "land of the free and home of the brave" it 
would appear that for a century or two yet to come our legislators 
should not permit themselves to be selfish or exclusive in their 
enactments. 

Verse 16th : " And he causeth all both small and great, rich and 
poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in the right hand or in 
their foreheads." Under the heads of small and great, rich and 
poor, free and bond are included all the inhabitants of a country. 
This verse is, therefore, correctly rendered: "He (i.e. the sov- 
ereign authority) causes all the people in the specified jurisdiction 
to receive from the constituted ministries or deputies a mark in the 
riffht hand or in the forehead. As to what was the nature of the 
mark which was to be put in the right hand or in the forehead there 



356 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

has been by the learned much research. Many good people have 
thought that the mark in the right hand refers to the ring put on to 
the finger in the marriage ceremony, and the mark in the forehead 
to the sign of the cross made thereon by the priest in the ceremony 
of baptism, in some of the reformed churches as well as in the 
Roman Catholic. This sign of a cross, however, being made 
merely with the tip of the priest's finger leaves no apparent mark 
and only denotes that the baptized person is received into the 
church, or, as this is called into the kingdom of Christ ; and that the 
person baptized is intended to be the servant or soldier of Christ, 
when, having come to the years of discretion, he is able to judge 
for himself. As to the ring placed on the finger of the right hand 
in marriage it is certain it does not refer to the mark; for only a 
proportion of the people get married in any country; but the mark 
referred to in the prophecy has to be universally received by all 
the people in the jurisdiction of the authority requiring it to be 
given. Some men too have expressed the opinion that the condi- 
tions of this prophetic mark in the right hand were fulfilled in 
Lutheran Germany in all having been obliged to subscribe the 
Lutheran "Confession of Faith" with the right hand or to 
swear to the same with the right lrand uplifted; and in Cal- 
vinistic Britain by the people being required to subscribe the 
" Act of Uniformity" in the reign of Charles II, and other docu- 
ments at other times. In neither of these cases, however, do the 
circumstances answer to the conditions ; for only a certain portion 
of the people and these all adults, would be required to subscribe 
or to swear ; while all the people of the country, young and old, 
free and bond, male and female, were required to receive the 
prophetic mark in the right hand or in the forehead. The protest- 
ant systems were as rigid in their requirements in regard to con- 
formity as either of the old systems at Rome or Constantinople 
was. According to the " Westminister Confession of Faith," the 
Anabaptists, because they refused to receive the mark, in the right 
hand or in the forehead, were decreed to be rooted out of his 
Brittanic Majesty's dominions. " Moreover, the civil and ecclesi- 
astical powers ordain and command that the said Confession of 
Faith be subscribed by all his Majesty's subjects of what rank 
and quality soever under all civil pains." This is about as all 
inclusive language as the Scriptures generally use to express a 
whole population. But though this be so it is yet plain that 
children are not included in it, and these in the Catholic and En- 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 357 

glish churches are christened in their infancy, receiving the sign of 
the cross in the forehead ; as well as in the Protestant churches the 
adults, in partaking of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, receive 
the bread and cup in the right hand. The above may indeed be 
one sense of the mark to be received in the forehead ; and the 
prophetic language appearing to require but one of the marks, — 
that in the right hand or that in the forehead, — the oath or sub- 
scription with the right hand may be one of the senses of the mark. 
This oath or subscription with the right hand was common to all 
the Catholic polities old and new, that is, Graeco-Roman, Papal 
and Protestant; these required a pledge of allegiance from all 
their subjects, from the infant that was pledged for at its Christen- 
ing by its god-parents to the old man or matron that were near 
to death's door, who were on certain emergencies or public condi- 
tions still required to subscribe or swear or pledge themselves to 
the system in some way. 

Both the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches practice infant bap- 
tism, the English church, as a rule, only among the Protestants in 
common with the Roman Catholic, putting the sign of the cross on 
the forehead of the infant ; which appears to have the effect of 
individualizing the English church among the Protestant systems as 
distinctfrom the Roman Catholic. This, too, taken in connection 
with other characteristics of their national religion may have a 
spiritual signification; for I have noticed in the writings of 
Emmanuel Swedenborg that when once, in his excursions through 
the celestial regions, he visited heaven, he found the English nation 
all in a place by themselves. This, I take it, only points to 
individualization of the English nation in regard to some character- 
istics of their church and state polity as distinct from the other 
Protestant polities. 

As said before in the Roman Catholic church the infants univer- 
sally receive the sign of the cross on the forehead in baptism, but 
in the sacrament of the Lord's supper, in the present age at least, 
the laity are permitted to communicate only in one kind, the priest, 
in this case, putting a wafer upon the tongue of the communicant. 

Verse 17th: " And that no man might buy or sell save he that 
had the mark or the name of the being or the number of his name." 
The explanation of this, with the exception of that of " the name 
and number " is contained in what has gone before under this head. 
It means simply that no one could have a legal standing in the 
state and so could not legally carry on business therein, who did not 



358 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

comply with and conform to the requirements of the church and 
State polity. This dual polity is one in such a way that the state 
cares for the church and the church for the State ; the citizen who 
offends the one off ends the other also ; so that there is no way for the 
citizen to live in the state, but by conforming to its established 
laws and obeying their requirements. The compliance with thi s 
law, in the polities we are considering by infant baptism, by oath, 
subscription or the like, as we have seen, constitutes the mark 
(xapayixa) which is the first letter (%) of " the name," which let- 
ter is somewhat like a cross; but not quite that as we understand 
the form of a cross. The first letter of the name is then in En- 
glish ch. which is to be understood as the mark; and in Rev. XIV. 
11, this mark is called " the mark" (i. e. the first letter) " of the 
name," and chapters XV. 2 and XIII, 17, inform us that the num- 
ber is that of the name, while the last verse, viz. 18th of the chap- 
ter we have now considered shows the number in Greek to be /J? 
whose numerical equivalent can be given in any language, but 
whose literal equivalent in one word in English is Chxist, and which 
is so specious a resemblance of the genuine name Christ that the 
worldly and fashionable, and those who are indifferent as to their 
own soul's salvation, and that of the world never notice the coun- 
terfeit. This is the name given by the Holy Spirit in the pro- 
phecy to that being, which had the two horns like as a lamb and 
spake as a dragon. If in this symbolization the Holy Spirit did not 
mean to show the union of the church of Jesus Christ with the State 
in government, as inconsistent with the principles and doctrines of 
Christ enunciated in the Gospels, then I have not yet arrived at the 
depth of his meaning in this case. There is no doubt but that a 
man may through grace practice self-denial and active godliness in 
any position in which he may find himself, even though this be 
deemed exalted in a worldly sense, but in doing this he will show 
himself an exponent of the life, spirit and example of Jesus Christ 
rather than of those examples which the world sets forth and follows 
after. In taking this course a man will have to be prepared at any 
time to give up all that the world deems great even to the position of 
sovereign of church and State, rather than be of a contrary spirit to 
Christ or act contrary to his principles as enunciated in the Gospel. 
But lastly, and in confirmation of what has been before said, it 
is stated in verse 18, that the number of the being is the number 
of man, not only of a man as it is translated in our common 
version of the Bible, but of man. We remark there is a parallel 



PROTESTANT-REFORMED CHURCH AND STATE SYSTEMS. 359 

passage in Eev. XXI. 17, where the same word, avBptiizou is used 
also without the article in describing the dimensions of the new 
Jerusalem. If man represent the dimensions of the symbolic be- 
ing, man also represents the dimensions of the new Jerusalem, or 
redeemed man. 

And as the dimensions of the new Jerusalem are the dimensions 
of man, not only of some particular man, but of mankind includ- 
ing male, and female ; so the character of the new Jerusalem is 
the character of the angel, which represents redeemed man, man 
though not freed from, yet exalted above human frailties, man 
living in the world but not of it, understanding what he is, and 
keeping his inferior nature in subjection; and thus the true Christ 
is exhibited in the perfecting, and the perfected human character. 
This is the gospel's idea fulfilled. But no human being, or being 
in any conceivable form, is to be worshipped. The infinite and 
invisible God, which is neither an object of the sense, nor of the 
imagination, is alone to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. 

As the Jews limited the favor of God to their peculiar mark and 
their number, so did the reformed systems, and so did all the 
Christian world to their peculiar mark or profession; therefore, 
the character and doom of both are well described by the phrophet : 
"But ye are they that forsake the Lord, that forget my holy 
mountain, that prepare a table for that troop, and that furnish the 
drink offering to that number. Therefore, will I number you to 
the sword ; and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter ; because 
when I called ye did not answer; when I spake ye did not hear, 
but did evil before mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I de- 
lighted not; — for (this) the Lord God shall slay thee, and call 
His servants by another name." * 

If our readers will now turn to the XVIII. chapter of this book 
of Revelation they will notice that the dominions of the second 
being are included in the mystic Babylon, that sitteth upon many 
waters; which waters are explained to be (ch. XVII., 15), peoples 
and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, over which the woman 
ruleth. 

These powers combining both the civil and religious branches 
were to be overthrown by secular and spiritual warfare; for in ch. 
XIX, 19, 20, 21, it says : " And I saw the being and the kings of 
the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against 
him that sat on the horse," that is, the agencies of truth personi- 

* Isaiah, ch. LXV. 11, 12, 15. 



360 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

fied, " and against his army. And the being was taken and with 
him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which 
he deceived them that had received the mark of the being and 
them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into 
a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were 
slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword 
proceeded out of his mouth; and all the fowls were filled with 
their flesh." 

The being and false prophet being cast alive into the torments 
means that after those powers are subdued secularly and to a con- 
siderable extent spiritually, they shall still exist in the world wan- 
ingly, and suffering affliction while they are in subjection to the 
powers of truth, and obstinately persisting in their wicked doctrines 
and practices. 

The sword which proceedeth out of his mouth has reference to 
the word of truth spoken by all God's true agencies for the conver- 
sion and enlightenment of mankind ; and which is otherwise called 
the sword of the spirit, the word of God; God's true doctrine. 
And the white horse on which the rider is, denotes victory full and 
complete ultimately for the truth I 




APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 



OP 



CREATOR AND COSMOS 



OB 



COSMOTHEOLOGIES AND INDICATIONS OF JUDGEMENT. 



BY 

EOBERT SHAW, M.A. 



IN WHICH ARE PROVED THE GENERAL POSITIONS TAKEN IN THIS VOLUME ON 

THE SCRIPURAL PROPHECIES, ETO. 



6 



BE VISED. 



ST. LOUIS: 

BECKTOLD AND COMPANY, 

210 & 212 Pine Street. 

1889. 



CREATOR AXD COSMOS; 

OK, 

COSMOTHEOLOGIES AND INDICATIONS OF JUDGMENT. 



APPENDIX TO VOL. II. 



Reflection upon the whole subject of Creator and Cosmos has brought 
me to conclude it to be expedient to make a short addition to this Volume 
II, which will tend to confirm the truth of the positions I have taken therein 
in the interpretation of the prophecies ; to demonstrate the infallible pre- 
science of the Spirit of Prophecy in regard to human beings and human 
affairs ; and by showing all the positions taken therein to have been well 
grounded, thereby to do justice to Truth, to my readers, and to myself. 
As the languages with which I have to do in the process are all related to 
each other, a short preliminary dissertation is necessary, which may also, 
to some extent, illustrate how race designations have arisen, and how little 
should be noticed, among men, some so-called race distinctions. 

There is in Gaelic a proper name Eochaidh, the genitive or root of 
which is Eachach or Eadhach (the c and t or d, the ch, and th or dh being 
interchangeable in the dialects, and in the same dialect, as regards this 
word). Now, the root of this name is each or eadh, which, for one thing, 
means a horse, Latin equus; so that Eachach means (of) a horseman, 
which is a generally accepted meaning among the Gaels for the name 
Eochaidh (pron. Oghie), and does not interfere with the other meanings 
contained in the root. But this root is connected with that of the Greek 
verb e/w, to have, to hold, etc., through its collateral form 8x sw i r0 °t °X e * 
from $x°Si a vehicle, carriage, i.e., anything which bears or carries, and 
the sense in which it means horse is in the sense of a bearer, up-holder, 
etc. The root has also the meaning of a holder or container of any kind, 
such as a band, strap, bolt, belt, clasp, etc. (eochair, i.e. each-air, being 
the Gaelic word for key, the agent or operator of the lock), (see also Gr. 
noun o^ew?, root o^e,) and in this sense it is directly connected with Gr. 
tuos, anciently written Fouoq, a house, i.e., a covering or shelter of any 
kind from a cave or grot up to a temple or palace. This word is Latin 
vicus, Eng. wick, wich, etc., in compounds, names of place. Now, from 
these two senses of the root, each or eadh, may at least be gathered its two 
senses of protection and aggression, i.e., of a defensive and offensive in- 
strument. It may be certainly concluded also that the consonant wanting 
at the beginning of the word is either the digamma (F) or its equivalent 
S, St, Sc, etc., according to dialect, and so if we wish to write that word 
in full with its ending we have Feachach or Seachach, etc., or Feadhach, 
Seadhach, etc. This last form, written in full in the Scotch Gaelic, is usually 
Seathach ; but as th is silent, it usually don't appear in the word, which 
consequently is usually written Seach, pron. , the nearest we can get to it in 

(363) 



364 CREATOR ATCD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Eng. , Shaw. Now, this Seathach or Seach, is from a root meaning the same 
with that of Sax in Saxon, of which the Saxon form is Seax, meaning a 
knife, sword, dagger (for which they also used the forms Saecg and Saegen), 
and, if the Gaelic language possessed the letter x, Seach in Gaelic might 
possibly have been written Seax. 

But this root Eac or Seac has, as I say, the meaning of a container and 
a covering, for we put on our sack which we fasten with a brooch-pin 
(Gaelic eo, a short form of each, as Eoin for Eachan, John ; the jewel of 
the pin is, properly, Seod), and we sack a city, i.e., put it to the sword, 
bring our offensive instruments to bear against it. See Gr. Zaxos, a shield, 
root Zaxe, i.e., by metathesis for lasx or leax, in which you have the root 
in the sense of a defensive instrument, or covering. But the Zaxoz in- 
verted, i.e., the concave side of it, the ancients used to hold water. The 
general word for shield in the Gaelic is Sciath, gen. Scaith, which must be 
an equivalent for Sethach (for I find our name, Shaw, written anciently 
in both ways), but these two forms of the same ancient word, usage ap- 
pears to have made in time to be applied differently. As applied to a 
man this general term means a chief ; and I may add that the substantive 
ending ach which corresponds generally to the Gr. endings o?, a£, etc. ; 
and to the Latin ending us, etc. , when added to Each or Eadh with S pre- 
fixed makes Seachach or Seadhach, or, as explained before, Seach, which 
is Shaw or Jack (the J in other languages taking the place of Se in Gaelic) ; 
and the masculine diminutive ending, an, added to this makes Seaghan or 
Shawn, which is a Gaelic form for John. Hence, you see the truth of what 
you have heard, that " Jack and John are all one," the latter being only a 
diminutive of the former. 

There is another Gaelic proper name Fiachaidh, the gen. of which is 
Fiachach, or Fiadhach, but, for the reason before given, generally written 
Fiach. The root proper of this word is Fiadh or Fiagh, written in both 
these ways, the dh and gh being precise Gaelic equivalents and used indiffer- 
ently for each other. Now, Fiadh means a stag, hart, deer, etc., and hence 
Fiadhach means a huntsman; but it also means a chief, a prince, etc., as 
applied to a man. I wish you, however, here to notice that the word stag 
may be directly for Fiagh by the substitution of St for its ancient equiv- 
alent F. This F is the Gr. digamma, and with them had the name variously 
Stau, Stagion, Sti, and equalled, in their numeration, 6, it being the sixth 
letter in order in their alphabet. As St its common form is <;. The 
digamma was, also, as I mentioned before, represented by Sc, or Sk, 
etc., but when it was represented by any other form than its simple self 
its numerical value was changed accordingly. 

The vowels i and e in Gaelic are interchangeable ; but for the present, 
not saying anything positive as to the roots of Eochaidh and Fiachaidh 
being originally identical, we find, nevertheless, that the idea of separation 
ig contained in both alike. As to root Fiadh, see Latin Findo, to split, 
etc., old root Fid, and Scindo, to cut, etc., old root Scid ; and in our lan« 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 365 

guage to eat is to feed, i.e., to chew or cut in some way. See, also, Gr. 
edw, root id, and Ir. Ithim, root Ith, i.e., Eadh, and <pdya>, root <pdy, i.e., 
Fiag, to eat ; also Gr. root Zxead, to scatter, disperse, but radically signi- 
fying to split or shiver. From root Each comes our word axe (in Anglo- 
Saxon Eax), and hatchet, i.e., each-et (the t not belonging to the root in 
the first syllable of hatchet), a little axe, and by prefixing s to Saxon Eax 
we have Seax, a crooked sword. Now, Seax, a dagger or sword, Latin 
Sica, root Sic, is the same originally with the foregoing, for the Zdxat were 
always identical with the IxbQai, or a very important branch of them. Scuit 
or Scuth (the Gaels pronounced t as we do th, while as above explained 
the th was silent) must anciently have been the name of the cutting in- 
strument which we call a scythe, and perhaps of a sword or dagger. See, 
also, Latin Seco, root Sec, i.e., Seach, to cut, or Sic, i.e., to scuit or 
scythe; and Latin Scutum, root Scut, i.e., Scuit, a shield, in connection 
with Gr. Zdxoq, a shield, explained above. By this you see the same word 
coming down to us in different forms, principally by metathesis and the 
aspiration and dropping of some few consonants. 

The Greek word for "have" referred to before, namely, fya), has an- 
other form, Zxia) (i.e., the e is changed by metathesis and the 2 1 is pre- 
fixed), and it has still another form, ZylQu), which are all equal to each 
other, i.e., they are all of the first person singular, present indicative. 
Here we have s% corresponding to Each, in Eachaidh (Latin Achaius, Gr. 
A^awq) Z%e to Se in Seach, and 2%£0 to Seth or Sethauh. The "Have," 
therefore, is a possessor or an owner in some degree, from the most lim- 
ited possessor up to the monarch to whom all things are supposed to be 
'' subject.* ' But it may clearly appear from this that the Sgid is the Ixud, 
with two of the letters changed into their corresponding smooths, and that 
the £/4do<;, as expressed in the Greek form, corresponds to Seathach or 
Seach, as expressed in the Gaelic form, and the Ixbd^ corresponds to Scuit, 
genitive or root of Scot. 

It, also, clearly appears how arises the two generic names for the same 
people, namely, Zxbdat and Zdxdt. A very common name among the 
Scythian or Shepherd Kings of Egypt was Sethos, but this is the Gr. 
Zxidoq, which latter is the fullest Gr. form of the word which I know of. 
The Goths or Scythians and the Idxai are in history distinguished as the 
people of the dagger or sword. Anciently, at stated times, they are said 
to have paid their religious homage to a crooked sword or scythe stuck in 
the ground, as a symbol of their deity. As to the history and progress 
of the Goths, see in Gibbon's " Decline and Fall" and in Pinkerton's 
" History of Scotland." 

The word Saxon is Latin for Seaxa or Seachsa, where the e, which per- 
haps anciently was pronounced slightly guttural ( ?), is dropped, and the 
Latin ending on added to the root. In the Gaelic, s before or after the 
short vowels e and i is equivalent to sh Eng. , and as it might be more 
nearly equivalent to that in Seax, as anciently pronounced, than is its 



366 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

simple sound before the long vowel a in Sax, a medial sound between Shax 
and Swax might perhaps more truly set forth the sound of ancient Seax 
as spoken by a Seaxa. The Latins had no sh sound and were averse to 
gutturals, and so in words coming in from foreign tongues with that sound 
they retained simply the s unaspirated or the aspiration, h, without the s ; 
and, where they could just as well, rejected the gutturals or retained the h 
representing the real letter. The Greeks also seem to have been somewhat 
averse to guttural sounds. The word for the number 6 is in Latin Sex, 
in French and Eng. Six, in German Sechs, in Gaelic Se (pron. Shah), in 
Sanscrit Shash, in Heb. Shesh, and in Greek ££, pronounced Hex. But, 
as explained above, the h is here only the remains or aspiration of a 
letter, and from the uniform appearance of the s in this word in all the 
other languages and the h only in the Greek, we have to conclude the 
letter wanting here to have been some form of the ancient s, aspirated or 
not according to dialect. But in the Greek enumeration some form of the 
s is found in the symbol for every combination beginning with 6, if not 
in/; — fore =6; <r,= 6000; ^=60, and so we see the S must be in- 
volved in /, the letter representing the other number beginning with 6, 
namely, 600. The letter /, therefore, although being an aspirated form 
of the kappa = kh, must also be an equivalent form of an ancient S, for 
it contains in itself the ancient Etruscan character which is our g, only 
inverted. But an inspection of the letters x and x by a comparison of 
them with y shows conclusively that they are both forms of the digamma, 
as well as is Stau (<r), for they are each a gamma placed on a gamma, so 
that you have a gamma appearing at top and bottom of the character alike, 
or rather there is but the one digamma here, the / being equal to kh. 
That the letter S is a digamma is certain ; for, make a capital gamma (T) ; 
now exactly invert another capital gamma to this, curving it so that there will 
be as much of the figure on the one side as on the other, and you have S, 
i.e., you have a gamma added below to the gamma above, and these uni- 
formly curved to fit into each other in order to have this capital digamma. 
This is, as I say, a capital digamma formed from two capital gammae, the 
one inverted to the other and so made into an S. The x and its aspirate x 
are from the small gamma, y. The initial and medial form of the Arabic 
kappa is nearly that of our S, and the Greek capital I shows the digammic 
form, i.e., as formed from capital gammae. I believe, therefore, you have 
it sufficiently proved that the letter to be prefixed to e£ as well as to Eochaidh 
is the letter S or its equivalent in some form. Now, the word Six or Sex 
is another form of Seax, and if we take this form of it in the third Greek 
declension we have x sa ^ S en * X sax °Si r00 ^ X sax (which root would equal 
the Gaelic Seach, for the Greek x is also a guttural), and this nominative, 
/ea£ = 666. 

But, as before said, the digamma comes into the other languages and even 
into the Greek in different forms and combinations, as, for example, the 
Latin and English F and its smooth sound v. That it was equivalent to 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME H. * 367 

the combination St is as certain as that it was equivalent to P and V, for 
in ancient Greek books the character (c), or Stau, is uniformly written for 
st, while a character like our c is turned into a (s), which character has 
also the same power in the Russian alphabet, as, for example, Roccia, 
pronounced Rossia or Russia. The digamma was also in the Greek equiv- 
alent to ex and an and <j/i, so that wherever these combinations occur, 
especially initial, they are generally to be understood as representing only 
one vowel sound, i.e., that only one vowel or diphthong belongs to the two 
consononts. This character (F), especially initial, is wanting in a great 
many words, not I think so much in the Gaelic as in the Greek, but that 
it was transmutable into the other consonantal combinations even in Gaelic 
is, I think, no less certain than that it was so in the Greek. For instance 
Fibhaidh, usually written Fibh, a proper name, meaning forester or hunts- 
man is the name of a district in Scotland, and was applied by some as a 
prenomen to my thirty-first ancestor, although this could have been, as I 
have discovered, only an equivalent for his real name. And Dubhaedh= 
Dubh-aedh, meaning the great or genuine chief, is sometimes spelled 
Dubhtheach, and may we not suppose it to have been also spelled in rare 
cases Dubhshteach, although I have not met with any instance of such 
spelling of this name. But, now, there would be here a reason for the 
change of the T into St which is as follows : If the second or any com- 
plete component of a compound word begin with a consonant and that 
consonant be aspirable (all the consonants are aspirable in Gaelic except- 
ing 1, n, r) it is aspirated, and in some cases, as in that of the kindred 
consonants F, S, T, loses its sound and is as well left unexpressed. So 
if the form and sound of the word be required to be sufficiently main- 
tained, what is required as the equivalent substitution is proper to be 
made. Now, in Dubh-Theach the th might as well not appear in the 
word, as it has no sound, the word being necessarily sounded as Dubhach 
or Duff. But if the combination were Duibh-Shteach it would be pro- 
nounced as Dubhthach, which would leave the second component of the 
word still represented in the writing and sound. 

(There are some exceptions to the above general rule as to aspiration 01 
consonants in Gaelic, as there usually are to general grammatical rules, 
but in what I shall do here in connection with that language I shall by all 
means make no mistake. ) The i and e in Gaelic being very commonly in- 
terchangable, we can have Seach and Siach, Fiach and Feach, Tiach and 
Teach, etc. ; but as the Gaelic has no letter x we cannot have Feax, Seax, 
etc. 

Further light on this subject may be had from the investigation of the 
appellations said to have been given to two men who lived in the early 
ages of the Christian era. Fergus-Duibh-Deadach was monarch of Ireland, 
and he had a brother whose distinguishing appellation was Cais Fiaclach. 



368 * CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

The former of these is, in the history, called Fergus " of the black tooth," 
and, in like manner, his brother is called — "of the crooked tooth." 
This is a fair enough translation of the words as they would appear from 
this to have originally stood in Irish script, and supposing the epithets to 
have been given by their enemies, for dead means a tooth and so does 
fiacail, gen. fiaclach. But you will notice the second d in the first of these 
terms, and the first c in the second to be hard and unaspirated. Now, if 
we aspirate these two letters in the two words respectively, we shall have 
deadhach and fiachlach, which changes the meaning somewhat, for deadh 
means an end, point, consequently top, chief, and so Dubh-deadhach 
equals black chief or black point, if deadh would refer to the point of the 
dead or tooth. That it may have had such meaning appears from this, 
that this Irish dynasty, called the Dal Fiathach, (which was Hibernian 
Scotch, not Albanic), had an ancestor Eochaidh who had lived 200 years 
B. C. ; and this Eochaidh had a brother named Deaghaidh, or Deadhaidh, 
gen. Deadhadh (Anglicised Bay), who had given his name to a powerful 
clan, was the ancestor of some Irish monarchs, and of a long line of 
Scotish Kings. This will show you the relation in this case between tooth 
or tusk and chief. But, as fiacail means a tooth as well as dead, and as 
deadh means chief, meaning end or top, so fiachail must mean end, top, 
chief (its root Fiagh meaning a chief) ; and fiachlach, as deadhach, would 
refer here to the point of the tooth or tusk ; and, consequently, caisfiach- 
lach would mean, in this sense, the impetuous scion of the point, referring 
to the tusk of awild animal (fiadh). This shows plainly that when the ap- 
pellation of tusk or any other cutting instrument signifies a chief, it has such 
signification rather in the sense of the point or destructive part of it (i.e., 
the top, etc., the idea of chief being top or head), than otherwise. Fiach- 
lach, as referring to the clan of Fiachaidh, is made up of Fiach, root, and al 
or ail, signifying progeny or clan. So Fiachal, gen. Fiachlach or Fia- 
chail, one of the house of Fiachaidh ; and Fiacail, gen. Fiaclach, a tooth, 
etc. The al, as second part of the compound Fiachlach, is the Greek root 
la in Xaos folk, people; and so you see Fiachlach represents our word 
folk, i.e., originally, people of the house of the chief, or " belonging to the 
chief." The root of Xaoq, folk, people, and Aaas, a stone, is appar- 
ently the same in the Greek, i.e., Xa, something which the Greeks could 
not account for, but which some attributed to the legend of Deucalion. 
They did not, perhaps, notice that the same thing has place in Gaelic that 
the same root represents a stone and folk. I take the original root, how- 
ever, to have been lu or lau ; for the word for stone in the Greek has in 
the root long a, and the root in Gaelic varies. But you notice in dead 
and in deadh, the elements of our word tooth, Sax. todh (not toth) and 
deadhach is here for Taedhach, and this for Taeseach, the dh and s being 
commuted in this word. Now, this root Taedh is changed into Taes and 
this is commonly written Tus or Tos, and signifies a beginning ; and so the 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 369 

Taedheach or Taeseach, the Tuiseach or Toiseach means a chief or general, 
one who begins or originates, goes before in battle, etc. To the form of 
this word written with the s, the idea of chief or general usually applies, 
but all these forms are only slight variations of the same radical. But 
Tuiseach, being pronounced Tushaeh, or curtly, tosh, as in Mackintosh, 
you can see here the form tush of our tusk. Taeseach, we have in the 
Latin Caesar by a change of two consonants into their co-ordinates ; and 
Tsar represents the change of one consonant and the dropping of a diph- 
thong. 

You will also notice in Fiaghagh and Fiachal the elements of our word 
fang, when you come to understand that both "fang" and " finger " 
come directly from the Saxon fengan. Fang means : 1. The tusk of a boar 
or other animal by which the prey is seized and held. 2. A talon or claw. 
3. Any shoot or other thing by which hold is taken. As to finger: Sax. 
finger "from fengan to seize, take, begin," etc.; Ger. Sw. and Dan. 
finger; D. Vinger; "but," says Webster, " the n is not radical, for the 
Gothic is figgrs. " Now, from the resemblance of a finger to a tooth, any one 
can see that the idea contained in the appellation refers particularly to the 
point of the instrument in each case, and then generally, in each case, to 
the instrument itself. The Gothic figgrs (leaving off the final s, which is 
only accidental), is equal to fiadhaghar, gen. fiaghrach, or fiaghair, for 
this equals fiachlach, the ar and al endings here being perfect equivalents. 
This shows how true language is to itself. As the old forms of language 
disappear gradually in the progress of time, there is still to be found an old 
standard or criterion somewhere. The western insulated position of the 
Irish has tended to preserve the ancient roots of their lauguage, a language 
which taken now in connection with the remains of the Gothic proves of 
great help to the philological investigator. 

In regard to the foregoing illustration, I may say, it is not at all likely 
that people will apply to themselves, nor will their friends apply to them, 
any opprobrious epithets. But aside from this the illustration as to Fiac- 
lach and Fiachlach ; Deadach, and Deadhach, will not only show the nec- 
essary relation between the appellation of a tooth or tusk and a chief, but 
also that there could hardly have been anything opprobrious in the epithet 
in either way, i.e., whether the said letters were or not aspirated in the 
said words, for it results in the same thing, after all is said, that tooth or 
tusk was one of their highest titles of honor to men. We even have it as 
the appellation of a god in the German Tuisco ; and we also see in Teut, 
root of Teuton, and in Deut, root of Deutsch, the elements of the word 
tooth, so that the Teutons, the parents of German, Anglo-Saxon and 
Dutch, were the people of the tooth. The Anglo-Saxon, for tusk is tusc 
(i.e., Tuiseach or nom. Tusach), or by a transposition of the last two 
consonants, tux. 

But, to close the foregoing illustration, it is said, that those two scions 
24 



370 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

of the Daul Fiadhach dynasty were conquered by a redoubted champion 
named Tadhg, which last is but a short form of Taedhach, and illustrates 
what a variety of spellings those Gaels gave to the same word, which may 
have been pronounced alike by all. The Gaels did not sound every vowel 
in a word after the manner of the Germans, but the mind passing over 
several vowels, divided, perhaps, by an aspirated and silent consonant, they, 
in many cases, made one short syllable out of a long word. Neither did 
they in writing make their words very long, for they did not usually 
express the h, as I have to do in putting their words into English ; but 
they indicated aspiration by a dot placed over the aspirated consonant, 
somewhat after the manner of the Hebrews in manufacturing vowels out of 
the vau ; and in many cases there is reason to believe they did not indicate 
aspiration even by dotting, the pronunciation of words, and their com- 
ponents, being so generally well known. Thus, Dedac = Dedhach (but 
not so long) = Deach or Teach. 

I here deem it proper to add an extract from Rev. Mr. Burke's Gaelic 
Grammar, in which, however, I shall have to express the original words in 
English letters. It is as followeth: "Ai, Aoi, or Aoidh is a primitive, 
the root of many families of words. In its earliest acceptation it means 
(1) element, and, therefore, (2) fire, air, water. Ai, fire, is still preserved 
in its derivative aoibheal, a coal ; and its diminutive form aoibhealog or 
aoibhlog, a spark. Ai, air, in aedhar or aer ; ai, water, in abh, fluid, the 
root of abhain, a river ; (3) a first principle, therefore, a cause (4) a being, 
a human being, a person, as we see in the words Saoi, a sage (from so, 
good and aoi, a being ; daoi, a bad man, from do bad and aoi) ; draoi, a 
druid, (from dair, an oak and aoi) ; f aidh, a prophet (from fa, a cause, 
and aidh, Latin Vates) — (5) the liver, which so well aids in supporting 
life, in this sense it is written ae, and aedh, plur. aedha. In its significa- 
tion of person, applied especially, it means (6) stranger, a guest, in which 
sense, it is commonly written aoidh (hence aoidheach, hospitable, 
courteous, aoidheacht, hospitality, courteousness). Also, (7) a respectable, 
skilful, learned person; and, in the abstract, (8) skill, knowledge, honor, 
respect, learning, discipline, elegance, stateliness ; (9) a swan. It not 
only signifies a being but the abode of beings, therefore, territory, land, 
island; as i Columb Cille, the island of Columb Cille; (Heb. ai, an 
island) ; also, the substance or wealth, which any territory must contain. 
Hence, it signifies cattle, a herd, particularly sheep ; from aoidh, a herd, is 
derived aoidhaire, a keeper of flocks, and in a special sense, a shepherd 

From aoi, a being, is formed naoi (i.e., an-aoi), a creature; and its 
diminutive form, which to this day is in common use, naoidhan, or, by 
chanoing dh into n, naoinan, an infant. Also, ni or nigh, a girl, a female 
descendant ; which is employed before the family names of females, as ua 
or o is before those of males. — Nigh or Ni and not ua or o is placed before 
the family name when women are spoken of. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 371 

Oide, a forefather, an educator, a professor, a teacher, is derived from 
aoi and de, of, i.e., a man of learning, knowledge; skill, discipline; or 
from aoi, a being, and De, of God; one holding God's place in the guid- 
ance of youth. Aoide, youth, springs from this root, and its derivative, 
aoideadach, well-behaved ; so do many others, which apparently are simple 
words." 

This extract may be of use to any one in a search for radicals. 

Folk, as in Suffolk, i.e., South-folk, etc., must be an equivalent for 
Seax, for see Latin falx, root falc, a scythe, a sickle ; and see Falkland 
(pron. Fawkland) which in later than mediaeval times, though it be, I know 
was spelled Falechlenn. This Falkland in Fife was a residence of the Mac- 
Buidhs, and may have been so named by them; but whether it was or 
not is of no moment here; this is its name, and all that is necessary 
here is to show that the term must be radically the same with the Saxon 
folcland. 

In Scotch Gaelic they, were generally accustomed to pronounce the 
vowd e as a, and so, if, the vowels e and i being commutable, the word 
Fiachlach were spelled Feachlach, they would be likely to have pronounced 
it Faalach or Falaugh, putting but little stress on the first syllable ; as they 
would either drop in writing or take no notice of in pronouncing the 
aspirated ch in the first syllable, treating, as they did, that aspirate gener- 
ally as th. Webster says that folk primarily means "a crowd," from 
collecting or pressing, not from following, but from the same root, as to 
follow is to press toward. And under "to follow " he says: "The 
(primary) sense is to urge forward, drive, press." Now, the very idea 
of huntsman and horseman implied in the roots fiadhach and eadhach, or 
f iach and each, is exactly this ; they were after game, a boar or an enemy ; 
they urged forward, pressed, drove. But both of these terms mean also a 
chief and so Feachlach (or neglecting the first aspirate ch, as would be 
likely to be done both in Scotland and on the continent), Fealach, i.e., a 
follower of the chief, originally one of his own class or family, but after- 
wards taken as a collective noun, the people, all his followers. So we find 
Webster here correct as to the radical meaning, and that the " folk " 
means, originally a collection of people pertaining to a chieftain or chief- 
taincy. But " to follow" is very close of kin to "to seek," and so we 
find the primitive terms mixed up among the languages fairly representing 
this idea. Eng. "to follow;" Sax. folgian, filian, fylgan ; D. Volgen; 
Ger. folgen; Dan. folger; Sw. folja; Ir. foilean, root foi-lean, or rather 
faoi-lean, and Seichim, rootSeich; Latin Sequor, root Sequ, i.e., Gaelic 
Seach. Then, Eng. "to seek;" Sax. Secan Saecan; Ger. Suchen; D. 
Zoeken ; Dan. Soger ; Sw. Soka ; so that all the words, meaning to seek, 
coincide with Latin sequor; Ir. Seichim, under the head of " to follow." 
Webster says here in relation to "to seek " that the primary sense is " to 
advance, to press, to drive forward." 



372 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGTES, ETC. 

Our finding of the roots Seich and Sequ under the head of root folk 
(i.e., to follow) proves to us conclusively that the roots folk and Seax are 
equivalents ; for here the root Seich equals the root Sequ and this last is 
equal to Gaelic Seach, which in its turn equals Seax. 

But a word as to Ir. verb f oilean, to follow, may throw some more light 
on this theme. Foilean is understood to equal the preposition faoi, f oi, fa 
(spelled in these different ways and signifying under, in, about, around, 
etc. ), and lean " to follow." The original form of faoi is, doubtless, faedh," 
the root of many words, and in its form fiadh we find it meaning a 
stag, a wild animal, a chief, a prince. In its forms feadh and feabh 
it signifies a wood (which suggests wildness, a shade, shield), and other 
things. Fiagh signifies a prince in the 3ense of being "in power* ■ or 
44 under authority " or "responsibility;" and if we wish to compound 
this fiagh with another word, say lean, we shall have to do so from its gen. , 
case form, which would be f eidh or f aidh. Now, lean, the second part of the 
compound, is used independently as a verb, meaning to follow, which its 
many meanings in Gaelic enables it to do ; but, in its form foilean, the 
lean must equal leach as in the gen. fiaghlach. "To follow," then, is 
simply " to folk," not in the sense of folk as belonging to the chief, penned 
up, " pressed " or " crowded" in an enclosed place or limited territory, 
but in the sense of folk going after their chief or anything else, or being and 
doing in obedience to him. Hence, in Gaelic countries, we hear of a man 
having " a following ; " not that any one is following him just now, but that 
he has people prepared to follow him as his clan, his retainers, his seich, 
feadh, or lean, so that, take it as you will, folk are the faidhlach i.e., 
faileach or f alach, the people, the followers of the chief. 

I saw in a Table of Gaelic events in an Irish history (I think it was that 
of Tiernach or the "Annals of Ulster") the name of MacDuff, who slew 
MacBeth, put down as Maelseachlain. This is Mael-s each-lain, usually 
in Gaelic spelled Maelsechlain, and pronounced Maelaughlin, the s begin- 
ning the second part of the compound being aspirated and silent. Now, 
this name Maelsechlain is turned into Eng. as Malachy, which proves it to 
be a compound of Mael and Eadhach, gen. of Eochaidh. I think the Gaelic 
Mael here to be an equivalent for ixsyaX, root of Greek fj.syas ; but the full 
root in the Greek is evidently tisayaX, which equals in elements f eaghal ; 
and so you see the g with its vowel is dropped from mael in the Gaelic, as 
also one vowel from fisyad in the Greek, which last is our word mickle 
Scotish myche, and muckel for much. It was a prevailing custom among 
the Gaels to give their family names to places, and, whether Maelsechlain 
here is designed to be an Irish equivalent for the Scotish Faelechlen, I 
know not. But it is not improbable that the word Falechlin may have for 
its first component the Gaelic Fail, which was an enclosure, a collection of 
people, a dwelling place, etc., etc. I am satisfied that Fail is but a 
shortened form of fiaghal, i.e., by dropping the aspirated consonant with 



PPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 



373 



its vowel, and transposing the two remaining vowels which would take place 
in declension. v Fail is an old gen. form used as nominative (as is proved 
in the well-known expression " liagh fail,*' where it is in the gen. and 
means " of fate "), just as Tighe, gen. or dat. of Teach, is very generally, 
both in Scandinavia and in Gaelic countries, used as a nominative. In 
Norway and Holland, however, they do not aspirate the last consonant of 
this word, but they pronounce it Thig. There must, indeed, have been a 
great disposition in Gaelic, owing to the ignorance of the people who 
spoke it, to have used oblique case forms for nominatives, and more or 
less to exchange the case forms generally. Now, Fail equals in elements 
Mael, although I am not prepared to say anything positive for or against 
the latter having been used for the former in Maelsechlain ; but, in the erse, 
the Welsh and in the Indo-European languages generally, m is commutable 
with f, being a letter of the same organ ; and in the Gaelic it is likely 
that, in some senses, mael and fail were used for each other. Failsech 
must be an equivalent for Maelsech, and this for the Heb. and Chald. 
Mahlach, to reign, connected with Mehlech, a king, literally, a great chief. 
A Gaelic word for soldier is mal, and a Gr. word for war is [xwkoq root, fuoA, 
or fxwXe ; but the Gr. plural fiuAat, equalling the Latin dentes molares, pre- 
sents to us, in this root again, the idea of the tooth. The Scotch Mull, 
a cape or headland, suggests the idea of head or chief ; and the same word 
used for a snuff-box, made out of the small end of a horn, suggests the 
idea of " horn " and tusk. Now, concluding fail to be the root form of 
failechlenn (called Falkland) we want to know how this root form has 
arisen. Well, the process would be much the same as I have partially 
explained in the case of the compounding of foilean; i.e., take fiadh, or 
feadh, gen. faidh ; dropping the silent dh and adding al we have nomina- 
tive f aial ; now, making a genitive out of this, in its turn, we have f aiail, 
i.e., fail ; for it would be shortened by the dropping of the last diphthong, 
the pronunciation being the same without it. Now, to this gen. fail, we 
add sech (also gen. of Eochaidh) and we have nom. failsech, and to this 
we add lain, gen. of Ian, making failsechlain (a residence of the chief of 
the country), but equaling Maelsechlain, in some of its senses, and formed 
according to rule, for by such declension must have arisen fail and many 
other words ; as is proved by fa, faoi, foi, etc., being different forms of the 
same word, evidently, originally faedh, or feadh. Now, this word fail cor- 
responds to the Welsh pawl, a pole, a stake, Eng. pale of which Webster 
says: M The radical sense of it is of an extended thing or shoot." This, 
of course, corresponds with the idea of fiaCal, a tooth, a pointed weapon, 
and shows that fail and fiacal are two forms from the same radix. In his 
definition of "pale" he says: 1. "A narrow board, pointed or sharpened 
at one end, used in fencing or inclosing. This is with us more generally 
called a picket. 2. A pointed stake ; hence to empale, which see. 3. An 
inclosure ; properly that which incloses, like Fence, Limit ; hence the space 



374 CREATOR AKD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

inclosed. 4. District; limited territory, etc." Even in the word picket, 
Fr. piquet, we may see more clearly the ancient root fiagh, i.e., piquet = 
fiagh-et. And "pike" of which Webster says: "This word belongs 
to a numerous family of words, expressing something pointed, or a 
sharp point, or, as verbs, to dart, to thrust, to prick, etc. Pike equals 
in elements Fiagh, while pale equals fiagal, which considered merely 
as a weapon or pointed instrument amounts to the same thing. 
Faileachlain, in which the two first components are radically the same 
involved in the Saxon f olc, means in this case definitely ' ' the residence of 
the chief of the district,' ' which meaning does not interfere with other 
meanings involved in it. It is very likely that by the dropping of • the first 
syllable of this word after Mac, Clan, etc., may have arisen the name 
Laughlan, so common of the chiefs of Macintosh and of the Shaws in early 
times, as well it might, for after the first S3^11able is lost, seach must be the 
principal part of the compound left. That this may be true is, I think, 
proved by our two words for an ensign, namely, Flag, i.e., Failseach and 
Jack (see Union Jack), i.e., Seach. It shows, too, that there is a diphthong 
dropped from Ger. flagge ; D. Vlagge ; Dan Flag, or that there has been a 
transposition in the case of each of these words, unless the last, which is 
probably the correcter decision. In the Latin history of our family of 
Macintosh, I find the Latin equivalent for the Gaelic designation of the 
family is given as Clan Fuill Vighkintoshick. But Fuill here is not, I think, 
to be understood for Fail. It is the Latin equivalent for Chuail or Chuil, 
i.e., " the clan of the chief," the meaning being still the same. 

I have now made it clear that Fachlach = , in effect, Faileach = Failseach 
is an equivalent for folk and for seax. Hence you have Norfolk and 
Suffolk or North-folk and South-folk, Essex and Sussex, or East-seax and 
South-seax, in which the folk and seax are equivalent expressions. 

Now, Teach, in Gaelic, gen. Taigh or Tighe, means any kind of a house 
or shelter, even to a church, palace, etc., but in eastern Scotland this 
would most likely have been usually spelled Teabh. See the Latin Tab in 
Taberna, i.e., Tab-ern; and, that Fiach or Fiabh, gen. Faibh or Fibh, 
means the same, see Latin Fabrica, i.e., Fab-ric, where the Tab or Fab is 
as full a word as is necessary in each case to represent a house, etc. , all 
that is added to the root in each case being a qualifying word. See, also, 
Latin Tego, root teg, i.e., Teag, to cover or roof; and Texo, root, tex, 
i.e., Teags, to weave, i.e., to Fiabh. To weave, properly speaking, is an 
operation somewhat more complex than to thatch, etc., i.e., to weave on 
the roof, and so we have in the Latin a somewhat more complex root to 
express weaving, i.e., more complex by as much as gs or x is a more com- 
plex sound than g. See, also, Gr. Tiyoq, root Tsy, i.e., Teag; and Zriyos, 
root <rrey, i.e., Steag, both expressing the same thing, i.e., a roof or cover. 
Here, in these ancient roots, may be recognized the near kinship or iden- 
tity of F, St, and T. The Arabic gimmel is simply an aspirated Gaelic T, 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 375 

and in the Samaritan or ancient Hebrew, the D and T forms appear to be 
exchanged. Among the Greek dialects themselves there are apparently 
extraordinary mutations, for what appear to us very different sounds take 
the place of each other. What, for example, appears to our ear more 
opposite than the sounds of s and r, on the one hand, and p and t or p 
and k on the other, yet in the Greek dialects these were not uncommonly 
used for each other, i.e., the n for the r and the t for the p, etc. But this 
is only an example, as intimated, of the changes which take place in 
the Greek itself. The Chaldaic or Heb. Vau is an open form of the 
Greek digamma (F) turned over, but the Samaritan Vau turned over 
appears to be the other, or St, form of the Gr. digamma (<r). The Syrian 
Vau, medial, appears to be the small Greek (<r) inverted, but initial 
and final this has the form of our small (o), which would go to prove 
that the S in all its forms is a regular digamma. The residence of the 
ancient Scottish Kings is called in Eng., Dunstaffnage, and so it must, in 
Gaelic, have been written Dunstaighnaigh, i.e., the two last parts of the 
compound are in the genitive after Dun. The make-up in the nominative 
would be Dun-steach-an-each, "the fortress of the palace of the chief." 
Now, in this compound, steach, of which the common form is Teach, means 
a castle or palace of kings, but the root must be the same with that of the 
Anglo-Saxon Stige, our Sty, which is also a very common meaning of the 
word fail. This word Dunstaffnage I take to be a fair example in Gaelic 
of the use of the St for the regular digammic form F, S, or T, and this is 
the reason I introduce it here. 

For the word Celts the principal Greek form is KeXrat, but the fuller 
form would be KeXarat. The KsXarcx language is largely the mother 
of all the languages we have to do with here, and the KsXartx race 
is largely the stem from which have sprung the dominant races of 
history. In the Greeks' language the name of their country is e EXXd<; y 
gen. 'EXXad-oq, root 'EXXad. It is said to have received this name from 
HeXXyv, son of Deucalion ; but it is much more probable that there is an X 
too many in the root, and that it should be fully and properly spelled KeXas, 
i.e., the land of the Celt or the wood-land. The Greeks very often doubled 
the letter X in a word, especially the epic poets, metri gratia, etc. ; and the 
y and x having both a guttural sound, they in some cases preferred the 
simple H to the guttural initial. The present root of the word Latium is 
Lati, which might possibly be for xeXar, by the dropping of the initial gut- 
tural with its vowel. The body of these languages is also largely made 
up of Celtic roots and words. Our very word Cloth must be derived from 
KeXad. See Ger. Klaid ; Sw. Klade, etc. And the root KsXad, as well as 
the root Seac, has the double meaning of a protective and an offensive 
instrument. When a Gael goes to church he goes to the cill or cell, i.e., 
the Cilt or KeXar, which is a shelter of any kind, but in the Gaelic especially 
applied to a church (see Eng. cell) ; and when a man kills another he lit- 



376 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

erally Kilts him, i.e., he affects him with an offensive instrument called in 
early times indifferently or dialectically, a Celt, a Seax, a Saecg or Saegen, 
a dagger, sword, scythe, falx, etc. As an offensive instrument the Kill 
or Kill is represented by the Latin gladium, root glad, i.e., ysXad, a sword. 
This is Welsh glaiv, a bill hook, a crooked sword, a cimiter ; Arm. glaif ; 
Fr. glaive. In Gaelic, Coill, i.e., Coilt (11 at the end of words being gen- 
erally equal to It), means a wood, i.e., a shaded place ; and in Welsh, Celt 
or Ceilt means a covert or shelter, and Celtiad, a dweller in coverts, a 
woodsman, a Celt. But the last syllable of the word xsXar is wanting in 
very many words belonging to that root, as in Welsh Cel, shelter, and in 
Latin Celo, root Cel, I conceal. In Greek, ytXaraw, roots yaXaxa and 
radar, means to laugh, i.e., to be glad or yeXad. Hence, a laugh is, in our 
language, closely akin to a joke or Seac (Latin jocus). Sax. hlichan* 
root hlich, i.e., ytXtc, the c taking the place of the t here as the last conso" 
nant. Latin gula, root gul, is our gullet, properly gulet, i.e., ysX.ar (the 
laugh being made with the throat) and this is connected with Gr. yXiorra, a 
tongue, root yXwr, i.e., yeXar. Of our word tongue the root we find by the 
the Gothic to be tugg (the n not being radical) ; but, further, the Ir. form 
teanga shows the true root to be teag-ag, i.e., the son of the house? The 
consonant lost by our word tongue of the original yeXar is / ; and that lost 
by Ger. lacher, root lach, and Heb. and Chald. laag, and Eng. laugh, is t. 
Even from the foregoing one may gather that the ancient and modern lan- 
guages, oriental and western, are more closely of kin than is commonly 
supposed. You can, also, see two classes of words coming down to us 
from our KsXanx or Scythian ancestors from two seemingly different roots 
(KeXar and Seadhach or Seac, Scuit or Ixud"), and these two classes of 
words having respectively two different meanings for the same respective 
primitive forms, meanings which, though the word forms are different 
from each other in the two different classes, are 3-et identical. This would 
tend to show that at some period, however early, the roots KsXad or IxiXad 
and Kud or Ixvd were identical, but that the two forms grew up dialec- 
tically, or, rather, that the latter form (speaking of these particular roots) 
grew up from the former by the dropping of / and the sinking or substi- 
tution of a consonant in some cases. The ZxsXerai or KeXdrai, Herodotus, 
the earliest of Greek historians, calls IxoXorm. This, it is seen, is merely 
a commutation of the vowels, the body or frame of the word being not 
changed. The Zxbdai, in the Greek mind, represented the KeXarai in gen- 
eral, the Zdxat being only a very important branch of them. And the 
word Goth is beyond all question a form of 2x60, i.e., rod or T6B, the 
vowel being only a variation of u. 

The foregoing preliminary remarks I have made, and illustrated the 
matters in as plain and simple a manner as possible, especially because I 
knew that such a preamble was absolutely necessary; and you will perceive 
the usefulness of them as you proceed with me in the application of the 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 377 

numerical equivalents of the Greek letters to various words and combina- 
tions of words: I may say that (1) in the Greek enumeration — 

A 1 a 1 = 1 jP »' = 50 

B' ft' = 2 S ? = 60 

r r ' = 3 0' o' = 70 

' J' d' = 4 77' jt' = 80 

E'e' =5 />' ^ = 100 

c' =6 i? <r', final? = 200 

Z* C' ss 7 ?:'= 300 

H'rj'z=S- r u' = 400 

0' #' =9 # >' = 500 

/'V =10 jr/ = 600 

tf' *' = 20 r ^' = 700 

il'A'=30 Q'w'z=z800 

M'fi' = ±0 Etc., etc. 

The numbers between 10 and 20, 20 and 30, etc., are obtained by adding 
the units to the tens; as, for example, /'a' =11; I'(3'=z 12, etc. You 
notice that all the letters under 1000 are denoted in the Table by a small 
mark, like an accent ('), placed over them; well, a similar mark placed 
under any letter signifies that it is multiplied by 1000 ; as, A'= 1 ; A, = 
1000; /'=10; /, = 10,000, etc. All the letters and their numbers which 
we shall have anything to do with are given in the above Table. 

As my principal object in this Appendix is to prove more indisputably 
the positions I have taken in regard to the fulfilment of the Prophecies in 
the History, allow me to direct your attention to the last verse of chapter 
xiii of Revelation, which reads thus: " Let him that hath understanding 
count the number of the being, for it is the number of a man ; and his 
number is six hundred and sixty- six.' ' 

This number represents the name of a man or a combination of men in 
a government, i.e., the number or a multiple of it represents the appella- 
tion, whether this be simple or complex, with its adjuncts : And, although 
it may sometimes represent exactly the name of a man, yet since there 
are or may be many men of the same name, the office," etc., of the man 
has often to be given with the name. 

Now, with respect to Revelation xiii: 1— 11, if the positions I have 
taken in this volume (pp. 281-344) be correct, then this number may be 
expected to have reference to the name Constantine, which we find to be 
the case : — 

(1.) KoevtTTaavreivos = 1332 = 666 -f- 666. 

By putting the proper vowel here in connection with each consonant, 
remembering that ax represents only one vowel sound, we find the number 



378 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

to come out all right. KosvaraavTzuoq is a nominative of the second de- 
clension. Constantine is often spelled in Greek with w in the first syllable, 
but this being = oo, is more than an equivalent for Latin o in Con; Celtio 
Con, Cun, Cuin, which is the root word. 

(2.) Aareivoq — 666. 

"A Latin." 

Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of John, saith: "The 
name Aarehoq contains the number 666 ; and it is very likely, because the 
last kingdom is so called ; for they are Latins who now reign." 

But the word for Latin was spelled in a sligntly different way by the 
Greeks, as well as in the foregoing, i.e., they spelled it also in the way in 
which the Latins themselves did, as in the expression following: — 

(3.) *H Adranj (Saodsia = 666. 
8 399 259 
" The Latin Empire." 

(4.) rpaixrj xac Pofxaurj fiaadeta 

142 31 249 259 = 681 = 666 + 15. 
If, still leaving the words in their grammatical construction, we Latinize 
this a little as to sound by changing the Greek diphthong ai, wherever it 
occurs in the expression, into its corresponding Latin form ae, we have, — 

TpatxTj xas Po[iaexT) fiacrdsia 
137 26 244 259 =666. 

"A Grseco-Roman Empire." 
I have left the o in Poftatxy, as, considering the derivation of the word, it 
is more fitting than the long w. According to tradition, Rome got its 
name from Romulus, the brother of Remus. Dr. Webster says as to the 
derivation of this word : ' * Rome is the oriental name Raman, elevated, 
i.e., a hill, for fortresses and towns were often placed on hills for security. 
Heb. and Chald. Rim or Reem, to be high, to raise." There is no au- 
thority, considering its derivation, for the Greek long o or m in Roma, and 
on this principle I shall act whenever, in this treatment, I shall have to do 
with Roma or its derivatives. 

The Grseco-Roman empire as established at Constantinople from say the 
year 300 to 1400 a. d., i.e., taking the great mean of that time, could not 
be called a Greek empire, certainly ; neither could it be called a Latin or 
Roman empire, strictly ; but it was a mixture of both, and its character 
may here be indicated by the change of the Greek tongue to the Latin 
sound, for it is seen I have not at all changed the grammatical structure 
of the above expression, only the sound. A written language is only a 
symbol of sounds, and the symbols have to accommodate themselves or be 
accommodated to the sounds in the progressive change of language. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 379 

(5.) KoavffTaavrsivoTtoX'iaT^j 6 Zefiaffioxpdrwp 

1827 70 2099 =3996 = 666X6. 

"A man of Constantinople, the Chief Ruler." 

The above two Greek nominatives are, the first of the first, and the 
second of the third declension. The first is what is termed a gentile noun, 
formed by adding the gentile ending, far^c, to the name of a place. The 
expression refers to the Christian Roman emperors at Constantinople for 
twelve centuries. Sebastokrator was, in that government, the highest title 
of honor. This they adopted instead of the old title of Augustus ; but it 
was something in addition to the old appellation. In proportion as they 
lost their power in that empire they appear to have augmented their 
titles of dignity. Wise monarchs, if they wish to hold and perpetuate 
their power, should rather encourage republican simplicity by setting an 
example of it themselves than otherwise. Good health and soundness of 
body and mind should be rather preferred and attended to by all than 
unnecessary personal decoration and gaudy show. There is iron strength 
and irresistible force in the mutual good will of a people and its central 
power. When manhood or womanhood, which greatly consists in the idea 
Df personal freedom and natural equality, is lost, all is lost. There is 
then, in the conception, nothing worth striving for. Order and progress 
imply that each one be required to attend suitably to the duties of their 
station. True national greatness can be attained, and maintained, only by 
true virtue. 

(6.) c Maayaxouri'iaTrjs 

70 1262 = 1332 = 666 -f 666. 

" The Muscovite.' ' 

MaayexouTjiarrjs, which is a nominative of the first declension, equals 
Maay-ffxoorj-iaT-qq, Maay is the Celtic Magh (often spelled mogh), a plain, 
etc. , and Ixou-q is the Danish and Norwegian Skove, a wood, wherein the 
final e is to be reckoned and is equal to the long Greek e, i.e., y. This, 
with the gentile, masculine ending, tary*, makes up the word. I know 
not but that Moscow may have been so named by Scandinavians. A pre- 
ceding Russian dynasty came thither from Scandinavia, I believe, about 
the year 860 a. d. In Celtic countries Magh, pronounced and written 
in English Magh, Mo, or Moy, is a very common prefix to names of 
places. See Magh-lena, Moydoo, i.e., Magh-Dubh, Movilla, i.e., Magh- 
Billi, etc. 

Moscow is spelled in Latin, Moscua, root Moscu ; in French, Moscou ; 
In Ger. , Moskau ; and in Russ, Moskva. It is situated in the province 
of the same name, which has an area of 12,609 square miles, and is said 
by the Gazetteer to be " an extended plain with few undulations." 

The above expression, as regards the number, I have based on the Celtic 
Magh (which is here reckoned the first part of the compound) and then 
the Danish form Skove for the second part. But if we take the complete 
Russ form and base upon it, we find the v in Moskva to be equal to Gr. ou . 



380 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and the Mo to be equal to Moty (as Moy from Mogh), for the g with 
its vowel sound is entitled to appear in the word. " Hence — 
Motyaxooiarrji; = 1332 = 666 -f- 666. 

44 A Muscovite." 
The preceding expression is the better one, although I deem them equally 
true. It may, of course, be remarked that ys in Greek results in £, but 
my object was not to make or unmake £?, but to obtain the just numer- 
ical equivalents for the literal elements of the words. 

Skva (as in Russ Moskva) = Dan. Skove, a small wood = Sw. Skugga, 
Dan. Skygge, a shade = Sax. Scua, Scuwa, a shade = Eng. Shaw, a small 
wood or shade = Gaelic Fiadh, Feadh (originally Fuadh, i.e., Wuadh ; the 
Sc, as equivalent of digamma, being used in Sax. Scuwa, for feabh or 
fuabh) = shade, shield, chief, the idea of chief in this ancient root being of 
shade, shield, protection, in which all these forms concur. Hence, we 
can have for the compound Celtic Mogh, great, and root Scu = Scau or 
Scou, chief ; and Moscow, the city of the great chief, the emperor. 
(7.) '0 'PutGffe'iaTrjs, 6 Aptaros AeG-KSrjTrjq 

70 1434 70 881 875 = 3330 = 666 X 5. 

The man of Russia, the chief Ruler." Or, — 

f 'Poeffffeirrjs, 6 AoToxpdzwp 

70 1098 70 2092 = 3330 = 666 X 5. 

44 The man of Russia, the Autocrat." The compound root Russ 
or Ross would in the old Kelatic = Ruis-se or Rois-se ; Rues-se or Roes-se. 

(8. ) l H Sapfiareta 44 The Sarmatia. " 

8 658 =666. 

J H QtwuxT) = (J) <pievevixr)) 4I The Finnland." 

8 658 = 666. 

Sarmatia and Finnland are included in the Russian government. Also* 
ZxAeuia = 666. tk Sclavia." 

The Sclavic nation which formerly inhabited the country between the 
Save and Drave. The Sarmatians and Sclavs are the two strongest national 
elements in the Russian empire. The word Sclavic or Sclavonic has come 
to denote the language which is now spoken in its various dialects, in Po- 
land, Russia, Hungary, Bohemia, etc. Iv is not improbable, for what may 
be known to the contrary, that those ancient people spelled the root with 
the vowel e, for dialectically at least, as in Scotland, the Celts pronounced 
the e as Latin a. I think, however, the root ZxXau or Sclav, as in Latin, 
is but a variation of Scelav, for Skelat or Kelat or Kelt, the d and t in 
ancient times changing with the v sound through the g. It is a very un- 
likely thing that the Slavs would have applied to themselves or worn a 
national designation implying any of the idea of our word Slave. They, 
no doubt, understood their national designation as implying in it all the 
honor implied in the words Celt, Tusk, or Turk. 

In the foregoing, the Eastern Roman empire and its existing represen- 
tative (i.e., representative in an important sense), the Russian, are indi- 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 381 

cated beyond all dispute and contradiction. And, I may add, that if the 
positions I have taken in this Volume (pp. 344-383), with respect to Rev. 
xvii, be correct, then these positions may be expected to be provable in a 
like manner. 

(1.) KeXartxat (or KaeXrtxat) paatXetat 

397 269 = 666. 

u Celtic Kingdoms." 
Those kingdoms apply to Gaul, Spain, etc. , as well as to those of north- 
western Europe, which have supported or maintained the Papal, the Franco- 
Papal, and Papal- Germanic systems. KeXarcxat (3a<rdetat are in the nom- 
inative plural, first declension. 

(2.) Kpdrmp KaapeXoa[±eaya<z 

1321 677 =1998 = 666 + 666 + 666. 

u An Emperor Charlemagne." 

In KaapsXofffieayaq I had to express with each consonant its vowel sound, 
which in this enumeration is perfectly proper. I may say that the long 
vowel (w) in Kpdrwp represents two vowels, perhaps three : further, that 
the (o in the nominative Kpdrwp, instead of (tj), shows that noun to be an 
amplificative, i.e., that the person to whom it is applied is of great power 
and influence. It may be illustrated by a large walking-stick, which we 
may call a club, larger at one end than at the other ; we shall then turn 
this into the French baton, only substituting Gr. w for French o, and we 
have batwn, which looks weighty in comparison with baton. The first of 
the nouns in the above expression is of the third declension ; the second, 
of the second and first. 

But, on the other hand, — 

KdpXofffiaya<; = 666. 

44 Charlemagne." 
Here, when we change the s in peyaq into a, as according to the pronun- 
ciation, which we may suppose to have been of the Greek in the Western 
Empire, we have Charlemagne, without any other word to distinguish him, 
representing the number. The Greek jxeyas is Latin magnus, Sanscrit 
mahat, Ger. macht, Persian meah, our much, muckel, etc, ; and so it is 
seen that rather the a than the e sound prevails in it. The root in full 
is meag, as seen in the Persian (in Gr., full root peayaX, our mych or 
muckel), but it would be more likely maag in some of the old languages. 
This being the full root, the Greek dropped the a in the first syllable, re- 
taining the e, and the other languages dropped the e, retaining the a, which 
latter, on the whole, appears the natural sound for the idea of ** great" 
expressed in the word. But where the c only appears, it is to be under- 
stood as long, and as a contraction for ae ; and where the a only, it is to 
be understood as a contraction for ea or aa, and is, of course, long by 



382 CREATOR AKT> COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

nature. Charlemagne was the only man historically known to Gibbon 
who had had the word " great " compounded with his name. 

(3.) Aachen in the Franco-German empire, whose modern name is Aix 
La Chapelle, was the royal city of Charlemagne. There he was buried, 
and there were inauguratad the Franco-German and German emperors 
after being crowned by the pope. Now, Aachen is made up of the Gaelic 
Each, before explained, with the ending en affixed, and it means the royal 
city, or the city of the chief (which meaning does not interfere with the 
other meanings implied iu its root). The chief city of Holland is Haag, 
which we call the Hague, and we find the same form in the capital of Den- 
mark, Copenhagen. We gather from this, then, that the letter to be 
prefixed to Aachen, if we may call it a letter, is H, which makes it 
Haachen. If, now, we add the gentile ending, tarys, to this root, we have 
a nominative of the first Greek declension, thus : — 

Haa^ev'iarrjq^ 6 Kpariaroq AsGTzd-qTrjq 

1184 70 1201 875 =3330 = 666X5. 

A man of Aachen, the chief ruler. 
This means the Franco-German or German Emperor, or Emperor-King, 
as he was also King of Italy. In the appellation Aix La Chapelle, or the 
Chief's Church, you have a proof of what I have before stated as to our 
word axe being derived from root each ; for aix may be understood as a 
gen. of aach, and it is only another form for word axe, although if s be 
added to each, as eachs, it makes eax, which was an Anglo-Saxon form of 
the word for axe. Aachen, as Moscow, is situated in a province of the 
same name, and the city is reported to have received this name from the 
mineral- water springs it contains. This may be so, for the meaning of 
water is also contained in the root, as in Latin aqua, Span, agua, root aqu, 
agu ; Fr. eau ; Celtic ai, ey, aw, which are only shorter forms of aigh or 
aibh, gen. of each or eabh. And ocean, Gr. wxeavos, wyevoq • L. oceanus ; 
W. eigion ; Ir. aigein, ocein, which general word = aigh-cein = aicein or 
aigein, meaning " circle of waters." Root cein corresponds to ting, root 
of Latin cingo, I encircle. A short Celtic form of it is an, with its varia- 
tions in, ein, meaning water, i.e., circle of waters (root an or ann in Latin 
annulus, a ring), for water must needs flow in some kind of curve; and 
so we have wxeavoq = wxs-av, root = Celtic aige-an ; and ioysvo<; = w-yev = 
aigh-gein. The form an is found in rivers Conan, Cwnan, etc. Root Cing 
in Cingo also corresponds to Heb. Chug, Chog, or hog, a circle, which 
word was not, that I am aware of (unless it was the root Chazir), in the 
Hebrew applied to an animal. But any one can see it is the same with 
the zend and Persic chuk, the original Arian form of the word for hog, 
retained in our word wood- chuck, i.e., wood-hog. The word chog or hog, 
whether or not applied to an animal, implies the idea of a circle or curve, 
as does also each of its equivalent roots, as su, seu, swe, etc. See Gaelic 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 383 

tore or turc, a hog, a boar, and also a ring of twisted metal, generally of 
gold, worn in different ways on the person. The root swe is represented 
notably in our language by the noun " sway " and the verb " to sway " 
(D. Zwaaijen; Icel. Sweigia, etc.). See this noun and verb under all 
their acceptations. To sway a sceptre is litterally to make it describe a 
curve, an arc of a circle ; and to sway an assembly or a nation is to cause 
them to incline or bend to your will. To swing is another variety of to 
sway, and to hang is still another variety, i. e., to hagg, swang, swagg. 
Any one can see that Gr. ioipoq is simply a slight variation of x°P ^i which 
originally means a circle, a choir, etc. But Each = Seach, corresponding 
to our word sea ; and, moreover, as Seach (Jack) corresponds to sea, so 
Seaghan (John) corresponds to Eachan for ocean. And here again we 
find language true to itself, for aigen is used in the sense of ancient, of 
time long past, and is the original for that word, i. e., aig-cein = aincein = 
ancien or ancient, And this word " ancient" is also used for the flag of 
a ship or of a regiment ; and, moreover, for the bearer of a flag, an En- 
sign; Fr. Enseigne = En-seachan. Thus Seach, Seachan, and Failseach 
or Maelseach, is each a word not only representing a flag, but also a fhig- 
bearer or Toiseach ; for Fr. Ensigne = L. insigne (plur. insignia) = L. 
signum, root sign, i. e., seachan, by which is shown that the prefixing of 
en or in to the root adds nothing necessarily to the sense, and that the 
word " ancient" is derived from aigen, and not from L. antiquus or 
Fr. enseigne. The word ancient must be akin to the word long, for the 
root of long, i. e., loch means sea. Ancient is long in the past. As to 
Sea, Sax, Sae (contracted from Saecge) ; Basque Sah, contracted from 
Saeg, Saecg (Sax Garsecge, Garsege, Garsegg, the ocean), Webster says: 
"This word like lake, signifies, primarily, a seat, set or lay, a repository 
or basin. " Hence you perceive the relation between sea and sack, and, 
in the mutations or metamorphoses of the word, you see seadh (seaf) is 
root of seagh or sack (sea). From Sax, Saecg, Garsege, etc., by a com- 
parison of these with the words representing sea and ocean in the other 
languages, one would judge the very ancient idea of sea and of ocean 
was that of an objective intelligent being, which being or sea-god they 
called by different names in their different mythologies. It is not to be 
supposed, however, that when they had advanced far in intelligence they 
confounded their god of the sea with the sea itself. The Sax, full form 
Saecge = Saecg or Secg, Sedge, i. e., sword-grass (called so from its re- 
semblance to a sword-blade), and, also, a man a speaker; with the ter- 
minal e. Now, this terminal e may possibly intimate place, and Saecge 
(for Sae) would thus mean the place of the sword-grass, or the place of 
the speaker, i. e., of him who speaks from on high, thunders, the root 
Saecg still meaning a sword or a speaker, i. e., a man. 

I do not think now I can have any difficulty with either Frank or Teu- 
ton as to the derivation of the name Aachen, as they can have it either 
way they see fit. I will add, however, that the very ancient idea of 



384 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

" ocean' ' was that of a great river flowing round the world, which gives 
the idea of " circle of waters." 

(4.) deeaxoTjTys KoavaizoXswv Bouvaxdpreus 

880 1507 1609 = 3996 = 666 X 6. 

"A despot, Napoleon Buonaparte." 

AseffxorjTTjs, commonly written Aeaxoryq, is a nominative of the first de- 
clension, compounded from Ata\q, root Asas, a binding, tying, etc., and an 
ancient but obsolete noun, irons (closely allied to noatq, a husband), a lord 
or master, an absolute ruler whose subjects are slaves. The feminine of 
As(ttzot7)s is Azynotva, just as noTvta. lady, mistress, or queen, is properly 
concluded to be the feminine of rotns, a husband, not more certainly in 
the sense of a house-band, than of a cause, lord, master. See Sanscrit 
Pati, lord, master ; Patni, wife, mistress, from root pa, akin to Latin potis, 
potens. 

The roots of r.onq and ro^c are izore and noat, or, noer and i:6iq (the 
latter, however, sometimes 7:00s or xosq), and this contains also the root 
of nolva, punishment, Latin poena. Hence, in J££<r^o^r^<r, the components 
are Aeo-e-xoeT-Tjs, the e in the root noer requiring to be lengthened to y for 
euphony, and to serve as a mean between the vowels t and e, actually 
occurring in the root of r.oatc, genitive noatoq, dative noosi, which shows 
the vowels 1 and e to be interchangeable in this root. A knowledge of 
the Kelatic languages also shows the root of noUtv, to do or to cause, i.e., 
nois, to be the same originally with nore ; for, while I understand the vowel 
E to be a refined digamma, or that it may arise from an aspirated Gaelic 
g, i.e., gh, I understand the i (j) may arise from an aspirated d or t, i.e., 
dh, th ; the Heb. yod points to this derivation, as also the yod in the 
Arabic, Syriac, and Samaritan ; and which the metamorphoses or muta- 
tions among the Gaelic letters as good as proves to a demonstration. The 
form of the e in Greek, i.e., E, proves its digammic origin no less than 
does its uame, Epsilon, i.e., Ef-silon, or smooth ef ; so that the s, o, and u, 
being derived from the digamma, are merely variations of each other. 
This suggests, also, the a to be derived from the same source ; for, if you 
invert a small Greek a, you will notice the form of the gamma sharply de- 
fined, but rounded into the vowel form. All the vowels, therefore, are 
variations of each other, for the two characters, d and g, from which 
they primarily arise, are in the Gaelic, when aspirated, perfect equivalents, 
and used for each other indifferently, i.e., the dh for the gh, and con- 
versely. The name Aeneas, for example, is in the Gaelic, Aenghais, where 
it is plain the gh becomes e for the other languages. 

Thus, note is simply nodhs, ue., Ttoye; or, to turn it round, take off the 
aspiration of the d, made initial, and put it on to the r, made final, we 
have deoph, i.e., deuf or deuv, which would be proper, and full root of 
our word do. 

KoavaTLoXsuj^ = Cuin-apoleon or the child of Apolyon. Cuin means 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 385 

kin or child as the German kind, kinder. Its full form is Csethan, 
pronounced in Gaelic Cawn or Conn, or, contracted, Cinn. I 
should not be surprised if I were informed that the Buonaparte 
family were of Greek descent. Koava7roXs(ov is a nominative of the 
third declension, Kuav being really a genitive, become nominative in the 
compound, and the word would be likely to have been commonly pro- 
nounced and spelled Napoleon. BouvandpTeus is a nominative of the third 
declension, gen. Boovandprsoq, But, — 

y Ap%d>v KuavaKolewv BouvaxdpTeus 

1551 1507 1609 =4667 = 666X7+5. 

"An Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte.' ' 
This might go to show that N. B. was rather a despot than an emperor ; 
but he became an emperor, perhaps, by being a despot, and was an em- 
peror, as the following will show, viz. : Dropping out the e from Bouva- 
Tzdprsoq we have Bouvandpruq^ a nominative, also, of the third declension, 
declined like ^x^t g en * ^VX 50 ^} ano o thus, BouvaizapTuq, equalling 1604, 
has the same genitive as above, Bouvandpreos. Thus, "An emperor Na- 
poleon Buonaparte" equals 666 seven times repeated. 

(5.) QpirxuT) = 666. 
44 France.' ' 

This means the French kingdom, some noun signifying dominion being 
understood. The ancient Celts pronounced the e in many cases as Latin a. 
The French do so now to a large extent, French en being pronounced as 
English an, etc. But, you will observe there is but one vowel expressed 
for the four consonants of the root, as in Frank. Well, if you attend to 
the derivation of the word and wish to have the a sound strong, you may 
express a vowel for each consonant representing the number. Thus: 
(PapaayaxaUr} in which you have a vowel for each consonant, that after x 
being a connecting vowel, and this word represents 666, the same as the 
other. Qpiyxurj, is a proper national name, formed like Arrtxr), and is of 
the first declension. We shall, as we go on, find others like this. Frank 
is from the same root as is " free." See Arabic Faraga, to free, to redeem, 
etc. ; Saxon Freogan, frigan, with the corresponding roots in the other 
cognate languages. The root, as Webster properly remarks, corresponds 
in elements with break, Latin frango, roots frang and freg, and the nasal 
sound of g gives n. France (Portuguese Franca, which the connecting 
vowel (a) in the last expression would seem to intimate) means " the land 
of the free." 

Movoxoipavia (ppaeyxias 

492 840 = 1332 = 666 X 2. 

44 A monarchy of France." A monokoirany is a monarchy, 
(6.) <Ppr)yx'ia.T7)<; y BaatXeus 

1150 848 =1998 = 666X3. 

44 A Frenchman, a King." 
In <Pp?)r x y r0 °t °f Qpyjr'xtaTrjs, I substitute the long e (t?) for the short 

one, which is here perfectly proper ; and the necessity and fitness of this 
25 



386 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

might indicate, if nothing more, that the French king was a son and rigid 
supporter of the Catholic-Christian Church. 

(7.) l H Ht<j-7)£vtX7) BasiXeia 

8 399 259 = 666. 

" The Spanish Kingdom.'' 
This spelling for Hia-dvu-q I consider a just Greek equivalent, as ->?ev is 
a better equivalent for Paighen than ~av; would be, and gives as true an 
equivalent of sound in the Greek. In the Gaelic histories it is usually 
written EsBain, which equals Es-baigh-an, and this = Es-Paidh-an, which 
brings us nearer to the Greek, for you see therein -aid, root of nats, a 
child. Now, Paighan = Baighan, abbreviated Ben, a son, and Es =Edh 
or Eadh, a chief (this is the root aed of Latin aedes, a house, and if it 
means a house in those ancient tongues, it means, also, a chief), and so 
Esbain must mean the land of the chief ; but to speak more correctly, 
Esbain itself means the chief, but Esbainia, or Hispania, means the coun- 
try of Aedh or Hugh, i.e., Cu, a chief. 

(8.) c Ifiadpuoq BaatXsbq 

70 414 848 = 1332 = 666 + 666. 

"The Iberian (or Spanish) King." 
In Ifiaao. I is the first root, undoubtedly a short form of Aedh or Edh, 
pronounced ey, a word for chief ; and ,3aap means, in the old languages, 
generally, a son, and in the Gaelic its meaning amounts, on the whole, to 
that of chief, so that the compound I,3aap means either the son of the 
chief or the head chief ; and so Iberian and Spanish mean here the same 
thing. This form of the word for chief was spelled variously, as Aedh, 
Aodh (Eng. Hugh == Gaelic Cu, a hero, a champion), Eadh, Eadhach, 
Edh, Edhach, etc. But where, in Gaelic, a diminutive is formed from 
any word, or, in general, where a word is compounded with another, the 
diminutive or compound is formed from the genitive case of the first, and 
so changes, more or less, the form of the root word in the nominative. 

(9.) nopzoyaaXta = 666. 
Portugal. 

Portugal means the port or place of entrance of the Gauls. Now let us 
find, as near as possible, the original radical forms here: Eng., port; 
Latin, portus ; Spanish, puerto ; Italian, porto ; Armoric, porz ; Welsh, 
porth ; Greek, (popsuj, root <popz or ooep and xopsuop.au, root nopsu or -ope. 
may be here considered a word in itself in the nature of a preposition, 
appearing as ua or o before names in Gaelic and as u in the sign of the 
genitive in the fourth Latin declension. 

Gaalia is about the way the name of the country of the Gauls should 
be pronounced by the Latins or Greeks in order to have the full sound of 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 387 

au in the first syllable. The way the Gaels of Erin and North Britain spell 
their patristic name is Gaedhal, which they pronounce Gael ; but there is 
no doubt these Gaels are of the same stock as are the Gauls of the conti- 
nent, all of them being of the stock of the Goths (Gaeth-al or Gauth-al, 
Gael, i.e., Gaul). These peoples, long and distantly separated from each 
other, came to pronounce the name differently. 

The root of the name Sweden, which is an ancient home of the Goths, 
is usually spelled Svith, which shows plainly the root to be Sgaith, i.e., 
Gaeth, Gaith or Gauth with the S prefixed. In this root, as is seen, the 
five vowels a, e, i, o and u were exchanged. Our criterion seems to fit 
more exactly the Gothic nations : — 

As (10.) C H ZoaidU-q 

8 658 = 6G6. 
Sweden. 

(11.) f H IyraXtsvuT) Movap^ta 

8 452 872 =1332 = 666 + 666. 

"The Italian Monarchy." 

The derivation of the word Italy I have found given in Celtic literature 
as from lath, a country, a region, and Ailne, of beauty. This lath is an 
ancient Celtic word, which, or a fragment of which, as "ia," you find as 
the termination of very many words expressing the idea of country. See 
Assyria, i.e., Assur-Iath, etc., etc. The th in this word implies in itself 
a vowel sound, and I have put the i) to represent the diphthong implied in 
lath. The word Ailne is very often spelled Aille, but the 11, nn, rr, in 
Gaelic words, especially at the end, usually represent a mixed combination 
(that is, when one of them is not redundant), as In, Id, nd, rd, etc. The 
a in IrjraXtevtxrj should have the prouunciation of Celtic a, or of the first a 
in Latin Italia. The primitive root of lath is, of course, aedh. Prefixing 
to this I (which was originally an aspirated consonant, equivalent to our 
y or j) we have Jaedh, for its equivalent Iaeth. In the formation of the 
word in Latin, the diphthong was dropped and the aspiration removed 
from the th. Doubtless the original word was Dhaedh, or Ghaedh, mean- 
ing at the same time a chief and a chieftaincy. 

(12.) IrjTaXtevtxos fisyiffzoq yyefj.6vtos 

714 828 456 =1998 = 666 + 666 + 666. 

"A chief ruler of Italy!" 

(13.) Saapdtvtxnt; = 666. 
"A Sardinian." 



388 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

(14.) Osff-eppaixy xai Hoyyapur] fiaffilsia 

819 31 223 259 =1332 = 666 + 666. 

"An Austro-Hungarian Kingdom." 

The first word of this expression I have based upon the German form ; 
and in my researches into the different languages I found that the French 
have the proper vowel for the first syllable of the root of Hungary, i.e., o 
(Fr. Hongrie). I found the vowel u did not suit, but o did exactly. The 
Hungarian expression itself is Magyar Orszag, and, for what I know, the 
o in this word may be the root sound in the first syllable of Hungary. 
You, however, already understand that the o and u are simply variations 
of each other. Hoyyaptx-r), therefore, equals Huyy-apu or Hoyy-ptax = the 
kingdom or territory of the prince ; for Hoyy = Hovy = German koenig ; 
Sw. kung; Dan. konge. It equals gogag. Piax or rick here means a 
kingdom. I find the Hebrew word Hog points to a circle or ring, an 
enclosure, and this, of course, points to a chief. Perhaps others will 
know vastly more about this Hungary or Hoggarie than I do. 

(15.) '0 Movap%o<; stars ppeixiaq xai Hoyyaptaq 

70 1131 1036 31 396 =2664 = 666X4. 

u The monarch of Austria and Hungary.' * 
The first of the nouns in this expression is nom. of the second and the 
two following in the gen. of the first declension. Osurrsp, first factor of 
OetffTeppsutaq, = Hoiaraep. Webster very properly supposes Oest to be 
of same root as hoise or hoist. Transposing H or y and inserting the t 
which belongs to the root, we have Otjigt) and Ostqrsppstxtaq equals, nu- 
merically, OrjiGTo.eppautas, 

(16.) Eyauatv'iaTrjs, 6 xpartaxoq 5s(T7iot)T7)<; 

1184 70 1201 875 =3330 = 666X5. 

"A man of Scone, the chief ruler." 

This must mean the Alban Ard High, whether Pickish or Scotish. His- 
tory informs us that King Kenneth MacAlpine made his royal seat at 
Scone, which doubtless, had been an old capital of the Picks before his 
time, after he had attained to the dominion of all Scotland, about the year 
843, A. D. Now, the Gaelic word for Scone was, perhaps, Sgaithan, i.e., 
Sgaith, genitive of Sgiath, with the addition of an, not diminitive, but de- 
noting place. Sgaithan would, then, mean the place of the Shield, a com- 
mon appellation of a fortress among the Gaels, and would be pronounced 
Sgawan, or Sgaune. If we put this into the Greek equivalent, transposing 
the t we have Zyavatv, and adding to this the masculine, gentile ending 
tar/js, we have lyaoatviar^q. 

But, on the other hand, I find that Scone, at least in our own age, is 
pronounced Scoon, which might suggest another nominative than Sgiath ; 
and in all the Gaelic with which I am acquainted I find the nominative 
Cu, a hero, a champion, to be spelled without the S before the C ; but if 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 389 

we can imagine the Picks, who likely named the place originally, to have 
spelled this nominative Scu (as is likely they did, for the S belongs to the 
word, as is proved by the Saxon Scua, English Shaw, a wood, which is 
radically the same, the idea in the case of chief or wood being, shade, pro- 
tection, shield), then we can have Scun, as the genitive, meaning the resi- 
dence of the chief. Hence, — 

t 2x6v'iT7)q, 6 ApiqToy.pa.Twp 

70 1188 70 2002 = 3330 = 666 X 5, as before. 
"The man of Scone, the chief ruler." 
It may be noticed that the gentile ending to the root Scun is trys, not 
ta.Tr)s. In regard to this, I may say that this is spelled in both ways, /ar^ 
and iTTjs, the fr being the essential ending, and the a, a balancing vowel or, 
metri gratia; and this essential root of the ending to masculine, gentile 
nouns, corresponds to the root cd of masculine patronymics, which, also, is 
spelled iadrjq or tdys. When, however, the a is left out, the '/' is generally 
to be pronounced long, as our i in Hivite ; as sometimes in the other way 
also. The necessity for leaving out the a here in this ending may point to 
the curt manner in which the Scotch Gaels are accustomed to pronounce 
their words, generally, in pronouncing and spelling, leaving out the last 
syllable. Scotch Kenneth is Irish Kennedhach (in both of which words 
there is a redundant n), and doubtless, also, it is the Danish Canute, 
and Russ Kennef. Tosh in Mackintosh, one syllable, is in Gaelic two 
syllables, as seen above, etc. 

Kenneth Mac Alpine attained his dominion about the time of the found- 
ing of the present dynasty in Russia, of the aggrandizement of the West- 
ern empire by Charlemagne, and of|the founding of the duchy of Normandy 
in France by the Normans. All those movements seem to have been in- 
spired by the same spirit, and to have been effected by different branches, 
however widely separated in time from the parent stem, of the same kelatic 
race. 

(17.) t H KaXedovixT) xpaTyta 

8 218 440 =666. 
"The Caledonian monarchy." 
Kparrjta is a nominative of the first declension, and the word represents 
a strong government. The appearance of the long e (i?) in it instead of e 
is justified by the vowel power belonging to the root ; but its necessity may 
signify, further, that the church was united with the state in the govern- 
ment. 

(18.) y Teaauapa^iaTr)^ 

70 1928 =666 + 666 + 666. 

"The man of Tara." 
The monarch of Ireland, from a very early age, on to, say, the year 
1400, A. D. Counting the u in this word as a consonant (it has, of course, 



390 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

to be reckoned as a vowel in the Greek), there still may seem to be one 
redundant vowel (a) in the root Teaauapa^, i.e., one more than there is a 
consonant ; but this is accounted for by the real form of the first root in 
Gaelic, which is usually written Teamh, i.e., Te-amh. Now, this Teamh = 
Teach, a house, etc., the Teamhair, nominative, Teamhrach, genitive, be- 
ing only a lengthened form of Teamh or Teach, and the ch and mh being 
commutable, just as the ch and bh which I have explained before. Now, 
Te, first root of Teamh and Teach, really equals Tedh or Teadh, which 
would equal in sonnd Teah, Tea, or rather, Thau, the ea having here the 
sound of our a in wall ; and the make-up of the word for Greek would be 
Tea-au-ap-a^ which is correct ; and it is seen there is no more than one 
vowel really expressed for each consonant, that primitive dh being dropped, 
because unsounded, as shown above. That word is usually expressed in 
Gaelic as Teamharach or Teamhrach, but this is for the fuller primitive 
form of Teadhamharach, or Teadhamhraach, which must have been pro- 
nounced by a Gael thus written in full, Thaughraugh. 

Now, Teadhach, you have been shown, is the full ancient form for 
Teach, and as applied to a man it means a chief (or, if you please, a chief 
in the sense of Eng. teach-er), and this word comes into English as the 
appellative Teady or Teddy (which is really not a diminutive form), among 
the Irish ; also as Thadeus, wrongly spelled Thaddeus. This is also the 
root Each or Eadhach, with the digammic form T prefixed. And Eadhach 
is the ancient name, which I understand to have come into English as the 
appellative Ody (which is not a diminutive, bnt), of which Owen may be 
reckoned a diminutive. I also understand it to be the ancient form which 
has come into German as the name Otho, incorrectly spelled, in modern 
times, Otto. The Germans, as the Latins, in forming their words from 
the old Celtic, would, of course, remove the aspirates, or, at least, reduce 
the letter-forms to their own sounds. I have explained before how that 
this primitive dh in Taedhach was strictly commutable with s, and how 
that Taedhach comes to be Taeseach, Tuiseach, or Toiseach, all these 
spelled with s being equivalents or indentical in sound and meaning, and 
how that Mackintosh, for example, did not have, necessarily, to adopt a 
new proper name in forming his own family name, for that the name of 
his father was Mac-Duibh-(sh) Taedheach (the sh, being silent, never ap- 
pears in this word, and its non-appearance makes the T, also, disappear), 
and his is simply Mac-an-Taeseach, or Mac-an-Tuiseach, or Mac-an- 
Toiseach, the only change made in the proper name being that dh is 
changed into s, which in connection with a short vowel has the sound of 
sh. I know our history states that Seach or Siach, son of MacDuff , took 
that name, Mac-an-Toiseach, from his office of general ; but he had no 
necessity of borrowing or adopting any new name in order to form the one 
he wore, and his descendants for seven centuries ; for it was only a slight 
variation of that of his father and of his aneestors, and meant the same 
thing. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 391 

By a consideration of words in the Latin, Greek, and Gothic languages, 
it will be found there was a very frequent change of that dh, especially in 
connection with a short vowel, into s. So, also, as to the name Miledh, 
i.e., Mil-edh, soldier- chief, we do not say Miledians, but Milesians, etc. 
And, now, as to this Miledh, whether or not he was a real man, or, whether, 
if he were, our family MacDuff are descended in the male line from him. 
This is a matter, I assure thee, dear reader, of which others may possibly 
know more than I can pretend to, and which I am disposed not to meddle 
with. 

(19.) Hifispvixat xparrjiat 

216 450 = 666. 

"Hibernian governments." 
In the ancient monarchy of Ireland there were sub-kingdoms or princi- 
palities within the kingdom. Each of the sub-kings was styled Righ, 
and, the monarch of Ireland, Ard Righ. Htfispvuai is here spelled in the 
ordinary way, i.e., with the ordinary number of vowels expressed; but — 

l H Hi(3ep£VM7] xpazrjta 

8 218 440 = 666. 

"The Hibernian kingdom." 

That is, as I suppose, the kingdom from a very early age down to about 

1400 a. d. Here, I have inserted the vowel belonging to each consonant, 

which is just and proper to be done. 

It may be remarked here, if it be worthy of remark, that Htftepevixr) 
represents the same number as does KaXedovtx-q (see above) ; so that, if by 
this it seem to be indicated that the latter is an extension of the former, 
as represented in the full form Htfizpsvur) ; by similar reasoning it would 
as justly seem to indicate that the former is an extension of the latter. 
A just conclusion, I think, would seem to be that the same people, the 
same race, the Gaelic, dominated long in both countries ; and this conclu- 
sion the language and traditions of both countries would seem to establish 
beyond a doubt. See, also, Chalmers, Vol. I. 

(20.) '0 E%ap%7i£niffxoTZos PoapxjS 

70 774 735 419 = 1988 = 666 X 3. 
44 The Exarch-bishop of Rome." 
The position I have taken with respect to the bishop of Rome, in his 
capacity of a civil ruler, was that he was the representative of the Exarch 
of Ravenna. The number here proves this to be absolutely correct. But 
while the Exarch of Ravenna was the lieutenant of the Eastern Roman 
emperor, the Roman emperor proper, the pope, in his capacity of a civil 
ruler, was the lieutenant of the Franco-German and German Roman em- 
perors. This principal, in the progression of time, was always acted upon ; 
for the Western emperors were crowned emperors of Germany, or of 



392 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

France and Germany, and kings of Italy, so that th« pope, as a civil ruler, 
could have been only a lieutenant of the Emperor-King. 

This, however, is only one side of the subject; for, considering the 
whole time which intervened between the years 600 and 1800 A. D., and 
taking the large mean of that time, we find the pope, in his capacity of a 
spiritual ruler, to have been much more powerful and influential than the 
emperor was in his capacity. This empire, therefore, as represented in 
Revelation XVII., had two supreme heads, the one the civil, and the 
other the spiritual- civil or Exarchical ruler, in his spiritual capacity, how- 
ever, supreme, ranking with the emperor in his capacity, and oftentimes 
much outranking him. In the clear sense, therefore, of the supreme civil 
ruler, the emperor is the eighth of the governments which are indicated in 
the prophecy (Rev. XVTL, 10, 11), as pertainihg to Rome, namely, Kings, 
Consuls, Decemvirs, Military-Consular-Tribunes, Dictators, Emperors, 
Gothic Kings of Italy, Franco-German and German Emperor-Kings. But, 
the eighth class of rulers was to be M of the seven," which I have proved, 
at least as to class, with respect to the pope being the successor of the 
exarch ; for the pope became exarch-bishop ; and it is true as to race in 
this case also, so far as that the exarchs and their successors, the exarch- 
bishops, belonged to the Roman empire proper. 

Now, this is true, as to class, with respect to the Western emperors be- 
ing "Kings of Italy." And it is, doubtless, in this case, also, true as to 
race, for both the Franco-German and German emperors were of that 
Gothico-Germanic race, which, beyond doubt, had proceeded from the 
kelatic. 

But you may observe here that the emperor-kings of Italy did not suc- 
ceed directly to the Gothic kings of Italy, for that there was an interval 
between them of about two centuries, which was filled by exarchs. Well, 
neither did the exarchs succeed directly to the emperors ; for there was an 
interval of about seventy-eight years, filled b}^ Gothic kings, or by war and 
tumult and confusion. There was an interval in either case during which 
the bishop of Rome was present ; and this would seem to have given the 
pope the start of the emperor-kings of Italy, as being the real present 
representative of the ancient kings and Csesars of Rome. Have it as you 
will, it seems for a long age to have been a pull and draw game between 
the popes and the emperor-kings, as to which was which or who should be 
the greater. But taking a review of that whole period of twelve centu- 
ries, during which that civil-ecclesiastical drama was being enacted, the 
pope appears in the estimation of Europe to have been regarded as the 
greater and more influential personage of the twain. 

In the above expression Poa(j.7)<; is in the genitive case after the noun 
preceding; and I have inserted its vowel sound (a) before (^), which is 
perfectly correct. 

In the foregoing the Western Roman empire and its principal supporters 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 393 

are indicated beyond all dispute or contradiction, and the positions I have 
taken in that department of this volume (pp. 344-383) shown to be cor- 
rect. And now, if the positions I have taken (pp. 383-455) with respect 
to the Protestant- Reformed governmental systems, as indicated in Revela- 
tion XLTI. 11, to end of chapter, have been correct, we may expect them to 
be capable of being verified by this number in like manner. 

(1.) AyyeXota xat Zaxatat fiaatXetat 

123 31 243 269 =666. 
"An English and Saxon kingdoms." 

Here AyyeXota is singular, while Zaxatat (3a<rdstat are plural (quite a 
common construction in the Greek, for a singular and a plural adjective 
connected by a conjunction to agree with the same noun in the plural); 
but the necessity and fitness of this construction here evidently indicate 
that one of those peoples were to be understood as concerned in one 
kingdom only, the others in more than one ; as, for example, the Saxons in 
Britain and Germany. It is likely the Angles applied to themselves the 
appellation AyyeXot or Angels, as a set-off to the appellation of Goths or 
gods. As you will about that ; all I care about in the case is this, that I 
know that AyysXos is the proper Greek word-form for " an Angle," and 
Ayyikows, a, ov, is its adjective ; while Zdxaq is the proper Greek word- form 
for " a Saxon," and Zaxaioq, a, ov, is its adjective. In relation to this, 
see, also, preface to Bos worth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 

(2.) ToOtxat xat Zdxatat (3a<rtXstat 

123 31 243 269 =666. 
44 Gothic and Saxon kingdoms." 
This reformatory movement extended over Scandinavia, as well as Ger- 
many and Britain. You may notice that Todtxat, plural, represents the 
same number as AyysXota, singular. This may probably mean that the 
Angles were real Goths, only self-distinguished by name. 

(3.) Sdxata xat AyyeXXotat fiaatXetat 

233 31 133 269 =666. 

"A Saxon and English kingdoms." 
Here Zaxata is singular and AyyeXotat plural, agreeing witth QafftXetat. 
This, doubtless, alludes to the Saxon kingdom in Germany and to the 
English kingdom. 

(4. ) AyyeXota xat r^p/xavtxat fiaatXstat 

123 31 243 269 = 666. 

"An English and German kingdoms." 
Here AyyeXota is singular and rrjpfiavtxat plural, agreeing with fiaatXttat 
This refers to the kingdoms in Germany and to the English kingdom. In 
rypfiavtxat I have put the long Greek vowel (i?) for the German e, which is 
necessarily long, standing, as it does, for two vowels, between e and r. 



394 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

(5.) A'fytXoioq Kpdriop, Hsvdpixoq 6 Oydooq 

392 1321 464 70 417=666X4 = 2664. 

u An English monarch, Henry the Eighth." 

Hevapwoq = Hsv-piax-oq. This as a nominative, would be equivalent to 
the Gaelic name Conrigh or Conery. It would also be equivalent to 
another Gaelic nominative, as Curigh, i.e., Cu-righ. (See as to the Cham- 
pion Curigh, Son of Dari, i.e., in Eng., Henry, Son of Darius.) Hevpcax, 
however, would come into Gaelic genitive or be equivalent to Cunreach. 
The genitive of Curigh would appear to show that e is the root or progeni- 
tor of i, but all that can be safely concluded as to this is that the vowels 
are all variations of each other. In the vowel economy each has its office. 



(19.) Al Ppsrraavtxai xat Htfispevtxat fiaattetai 

11 800 31 221 269 =1332 = 666 + 666. 

"The British and Irish kingdoms." 
BpsTTaavuai is spelled in the Greek with the long <z, for which it is per- 
missible to substitute aa, as I have done. As noted before in another 
case, the vowel pertaining to each consonant had to be supplied in this 
case also in Hfispevixat. The above expression, being completely in the 
plural, points to those kingdoms separately, i.e., in the ages before they 
came under one government. Oh, how much need there is of reformation 
and improvement of society in those countries even now 1 1 1 



(8.) IIpuff<j£vtx7) (iaffdeta 

1073 259 = 1332 = 666 + 666. 
U A Prussian kingdom." 

The word for Prussia is written in German, Preussen ; D. Pruissen ; Fr. 
Prusse ; Latin, Prussia. It would seem from this general way of spelling 
the word that the root is Pruss, as I have it in the above expression. If 
so, the u has to be taken for a double vowel or the ancient w, which 
would be represented in Greek by u, but for which the German sub- 
stitutes eu, e being really only another form of u. The German, and 
especially the Hollandisch, are, I think, very fair languages in the expres- 
sion of the roots of words, or reasonable equivalents for them. The French 
is generally very fair as to the root, but it has sacrificed much to sound. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 395 

(9.) '0 BrjpoXtViaTTjff, '0 MovapyrjS 

70 789 70 1069 = 1998 = 666 -f 666 + 666. 

"The man of Berlin, the Monarch." 
BrjpoAcvi'aTTjs I have based upon the Latin form Berolinum, root Berolin, 
putting the rj between the two first consonants of the word for the German 
e, which there stands for a diphthong. This is a perfectly proper con- 
struction. 

(10.) HoaXXaavtxrj xpareta 

229 437 = 666. 

U A Hollandish kingdom." 

Holland means hollow-land. Eng. hollow ; Sax. hoi ; D. hoi ; Ger. hohl. 
It is evident, not only from the German form but from other considerations, 
that the A in the first part of the word is entitled to a vowel, and this I 
have supplied. The Greek words for hollow and a hollow or hole, are 
xodoq and xodr), root xod. The Arabic is Khala, and the Heb. HI may be 
pronounced either hala or hola, doubtless the latter, in accordance with 
the general pronunciation of the word in the languages. As to the second 
part of the compound, Eng., Goth., Ger., D., Dan., and Sw. land ; It. and 
Sp. lando, a plain or field; Webster supposes this word to be the same 
as Welsh llan, a clear place or area, the same as lawn, and the d final to 
be adventitious. In Gaelic it is spelled Ian or lann, which, if necessary 
to express, is, of course, entitled to as man}'' vowels as there are conso- 
nants. Lan is, doubtless, the original form, so far as the n or d is con- 
cerned ; but we can add another n to this and make a diminutive of it, 
and it will at the end amount to much the same, just as Jack and John. 
Our word ocean is derived from the general root each or eadh, Fr. eau. 
It is really aig-gein, which you may, if you please, call offspring of each, 
and stilj in all the historical ages there has always been a larger idea of 
ocean than of its parent (by derivation) each or seach, i.e., sea. 

(11.) l (Saodeuq HoeAAavdetas 

70 848 414 = 1332 = 666 -f 666. 

" The king of Holland." 
Ba<rdeu<; is a nominative of the third, and the following noun is in the 
genitive singular of the first declension. The d with its vowel is required 
here in Holland, and the noun looks, on the whole, more compact than as 
above. They are both in proper construction. 

(12.) Movapxrjs (3ataAysca<; 

1069 263 = 1332 = 666 + 666. 

"A monarch of Belgium." 
The first of these nouns is in the nominative and the second in the geni- 
tive singular of the first declension. Belg is derived from a root corre- 
sponding to Ch., Heb., Syr., and Ar. Baal, a lord, chief; but in forming 



396 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the compound the first part is put in the genitive ; thus, Baal, gen. Baail, 
then Baaileg or Baailge ; more elegant Greek, Baiakye. 

(13.) Zutdtxrj AsffTCOTSta 

657 675 = 1332 = 666 -f 666. 

"A Swedish monarchy." 
The ancient name of Sweden its people called Svithiod, of which the 
root is Svith, as seen in Imdixt] above. This I would judge to be for 
Scuth, as they put v or w for the c or g. Thus, Sweden would anciently 
have been a home of that part of the Kelatic race called Scythians and 
Goths. 

(14.) *0 2rosxHoXij.iaT7)s 

70 1262 = 66Q + 666. 

"The man of Stockholm.' ' 
Stock, in Stockholm, = Sax. Stoc, a place, etc.,=(in a more extended 
sense) Gr. Zrsyo^^ Teyos ; Gael. Teach (Steach) ; about exactly = Fail ; 
Eng. Pale = in some degree, W. Ma and Mael in Maeldref , market town, 
etc. Stockholm means the city of the island. 

(15.) Nopurjur) = 666. 
"Norway." 

This national appellation is perfectly formed from the root, as Arrtxrjy 
etc. In Saxon it is Norwaeg, root Norwae, and in Dan. Norvej, root 
Norve, but the e here is long, and equals Greek ^, as above. The Nor- 
wegians were certainly a wonderful people in the ages of history, but 
savage and cruel in war. 

(16.) Koi(3r)vHaau7)vtaT7}^, fiaaifojOS 

1147 851 =666X3. 

"A man of Copenhagen, a king." 
Here I have spelled Copenhagen as do the Danes, allowing each con- 
sonant its vowel ; but I have had to lengthen the vowel e, as often as it 
occurs in the two words, into its long form tj, which is proper in this enu- 
meration, as the Gothic or Danish e is equal in sound to y. And as for 
(3a<rdeu<;, I find its root is given in both ways in Homer, i.e., (iaade and 
(iaadfj ; the latter of which I suspect to be the correcter form ; if, as I 
have long supposed, its make-up is Celtic Ba-gil-each, " father of the 
chief," or chief dom, whatever eadh or each might mean in the compound; 
or " son of the chief," &c. as Celtic ab means a son. The vocative singu- 
lar of (iaadeuq is (Saadsu, which would imply this supposition to be well 
grounded. But — 

Koe7t£vHaa%evl'aT7)s 6 (Tupavvos) = Turjpavavos 

1414 70 1180 =2664 = 666X4. 

"A man of Copenhagen, the chief ruler." 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 397 

Copenhagen; Dan. Kjobenhavn (i.e., merchant's haven); Ger. Kopen- 
hagen ; Fr. Copenhague, ete. I have given it here the ordinary spelling, 
allowing for each consonant its vowel sound. I deem this as correct an 
expression as that above, perhaps more so, owing to the nature and de- 
rivation of the limiting noun. In Tupawoq there would seem, at first 
sight, to be a redundant v, but when we investigate the derivation of the 
word, we find this not to be the case. Tupawoq is no other than a dimin- 
utive formed from the Celtic word for Lord; Gaelic Tighearna, from 
Tighe, genitive of Teach, a house, a lord, prince, ruler, " indicating,' ' 
says Webster, "that the word originally signified merely the master of a 
family or the head of a clan." This is the word the Gaels mostly use in 
addressing the Supreme Being, as an equivalent for Latin Dominus, Gr. 
Kupws. They also use it as a title of address to men, as equivalent to 
Eng. Sftr, Ger. Herr or Hern. The Welsh spell it Teyrn, a king, sov- 
ereign, and for house they have the form ty. Now, Tighearna equals 
Tighe-ar-an, root; and Tupavvoq = Tuyp-av-av, root, i.e., To-qpavav is a 
diminutive of Tuypav by the addition of the Celtic diminutive particle an. 
Hence, Tupawoq was used in Greek for a queen, and for a king's son or 
daughter, as well as for the chief himself. It is of the masculine and 
feminine gender. Some lexicographers say that Tupawoq is strictly Doric 
for Koipavoq, but this is not strictly so, for it can only at the most repre- 
sent a diminutive of Koipavoq. This diminutive, then, is the Irish common 
name Tiernan, and I find the same diminutive, or a slight variation of it, 
to be a common name among the Scandinavians. There is no doubt but 
that in early times there was a close kinship existing between the Irish, 
Danes, and Norwegians, and it may have been an idea they had of prior 
right to the country which induced the Danes in the mediaeval times to 
strive so strenuously as they did for the possession of Ireland. There 
may, therefore, for what I know, be a meaning hid in the fitness of the 
word Topawoq in the above expression ; and if there be such a meaning, 
would that meaning be that the monarch of Denmark is ruler of a Gotho- 
Gaelic race? It has long been my impression that the Norwegian Yarls 
were originally sprung from Irish monarchs (i.e., whether those monarchs 
were of Scandinavian or of other descent), for the very form of the word 
is Gaelic, i.e., Iarla, full form Iarfhlaith, the fh and th being unsounded 
and dropped. Iarfhlaith = Iar, next, after, and flaith, a prince or sover- 
eign; hence, a Iavla is next after the king, i.e., a prince, a chief of a 
territory ; a kinglet, as Carlisle has it. The Anglo-Saxon of it is eorl, 
and I don't see that the word is common to any of the other languages. 
These latter people are said to have received it from the Danes, although 
the term is not now used in Denmark. I will leave this subject to the 
Goths and Gaels to decide as best they can ; but I may say that the word 
Tupawoq, according to its origin, can convey none of the idea of our ty- 
rant or despot ; usage has made it to convey such a meaning. Power 
should always be exercised with reason, justice, and moderation. 



398 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

The ancient peoples of the Kelatic stock were accustomed to give their 
own family names or title to places, and so I find this root Tu-qp as the name 
of a province of Russia, I think not far from the province of Moskva ; 
and of course the Russian royal name Vladimer, which name I see also 
applied to a province, is simply the Gaelic Flaith-mor, i.e., great prince or 
sovereign. 

(17.) Asaauavp.aspxcxr) = 666. 
i l Denmark.' ' 

It may appear that in the root Asaauav there is a redundant vowel, but 
that this is not the case will appear from attention to the derivation of the 
root. Asaauav would be expressed in full in Gaelic by Deadhamhan, pro- 
nounced Dhawuan, Dhawvn, or Dhawn. Deadhamhan or Deadhabhan (it 
being written in both ways, the bh and mh being equivalents) is a dimin- 
utive of deadhabh, or deadhamh, commonly written and pronounced Dubh, 
black; but this diminutive, deadhabhan, is for our word dun, i.e., brown, 
that is, when used as an adjective ; but as a substantive, the d is here 
often connected with the t, as in Teach, a house ; for I find that, as ap- 
plied to a man or to a race, the word is spelled Tedhach or Dedhach, i.e., 
Teach or Deach, a ehief or his progeny. The Latin form of Deach or 
Teach is Dux, root Due, which we must say is a short form for Deadhach 
or Teadhach, but such is the case. It is the Gaelic-English name Teague, 
as in Montague, or Taidg, Deag, etc. You have seen it in the name for 
Tara and in other cases ere this. But still you may notice that there 
requires a vowel sound to be expressed before /. in the second component 
of the compound. Well, this is contained in the combination preceding 
p ; but as it will not change the numeration in this case, I shall make a 
little different arrangement, illustrating as I go along, thus: Asauav- 
fiaepaxixrj = 666, that is, I have transposed the a, which = 1, from the first 
part of the compound and put it before x in the second part ; but what I 
have to add is that the full root of the first part is Dedhabh, the a before 
dh being put in by Gaelic construction to balance the a which comes after 
it. This matter of a balancing vowel is a nice point in Gaelic construction, 
which sometimes leaves the nominative form of the word larger as to vow- 
els than what its root indicates in the genitive ; but this balancing vowel is 
often neglected in writing. In the root dedh, however, as I have had oc- 
casion to illustrate before, there is a vowel implied in the dh, i.e., dedh 
really equals deadh, and is equivalent in our enumeration to dea. The dh, 
here equal to the th, lengthens its vowel sound merely, and as the e in this 
word is generally pronounced like a, then declh would equal in sound daa, 
and it would leave it as I did at the start Asaauav, so that the vowel sound 
pertaining to x in the second part of the compound is clearly seen to be 
contained in the preceding vowel combination. 

Dan. Danmark ; Ger. Danemark ; Dutch, Deenemerken ; Sax. Marc, 
mearc ; D. Merk ; Ger. Marke ; Dan. Merke ; Sw. Marke ; Arm. Mercg ; 



ATrJK^DlX TO VOLUME II. 



3^9 



Eng. Mark. This word, as in Denmark, coincides in elements with March, 
and Marches, borders, boundaries, extent, etc. And the Dan in Den- 
mark = Deadhabhan = Sp. Don ; Dan in Daniel ; Don in Donald, Donach, 
etc.; Dun in Duncan, Dun, a fortress. It also equals Eng. dawn (of 
d a y) ; Sax. dagian; D. daagen; Ger, tagen, from the root of day; the 
idea arises from the roof, or house ; contemplated from the outside (bright, 
open, deabh or deagh, day) ; (brightish, opening, deabhan or deaghan, 
dawn) ; but, contemplated from the inside (dark, contracted, dubh or 
dumh) ; (darkish, dusky, dubhan, dumhan, duchan, dun). The primitive 
idea is of roof or cover (for house), and this contemplated from the out- 
side and from the inside suggests or presents two different ideas or varia- 
tions of the same general idea, but it is still of a roof or house. Eng. 
day ; Sax. daeg; D. Sw. Dan. dag; Goth, dags ; Ir. dia, di (a now obsolete 
word, unless in a few compounds, they using nominative la for it) ; W. 
dydd = dedhadh or dedhagh (although the Ir. and Latin have lost most of the 
elements of the full root, the Welsh has, in effect, retained those elements 
unaffected by aspiration). Sanscrit dyu = dedhaw. Walter Scott, if cor- 
rect in little else in that novel, has hit upon a correct Eng. equivalent of 
the ancient family name of Mackintosh and his ancestors, the MacDuffs. 
See "Farquard Day;" Fair Maid of Perth, ch. XXXIV. The relation 
between the words day and teach, a house, is seen in Ger. dach, a roof ; 
Eng. deck, the roof of a ship ; thach (misspelled thatch), a kind of cover- 
ing ; Sax. thaec, a covering, a roof ; D. dak ; Sw. tak ; Dan. tag, taekke ; 
Ir. tuighe, which is simply a genitive of an old form of the word for house. 
"The primary sense," says Webster, "is to put on, cover over, or make 
close." Then, day is a covering over or vesture of brightness, light; the 
night the negative of day, as ne-acht, i.e., ne or ni, not, and tach or 
teach, tedhach or dedhach, day. Eng. night ; Sax. niht ; Goth, nahts ; 
D. nagt; Ger. nacht; Latin, nox, root noct; Gr. vug, root vuxv, Ir. 
nocht, etc. Denmark means the country (or Marches) of the chief; 
Latin Dux, root due; dac in Dacia. Chalmers, following Pliny and 
others, reasonably concludes the Gatae, Dacae, and Goths to be all one 
people. 

(20.) BaatAsta fieyal-qs BpeTTavias xat EpsvAaviaq 

259 287 969 31 452 = 1998 = 666 X 3. 

"A kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." 
BamXtta is here in the nominative singular, and the adjective and nouns 
following it in the genitive singular of the first declension. Epsvlavias 
may, perhaps, be taken as an evidence of the d being not radical in land, 



400 CREATOB AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and of the vowels s and c being variations of each other. It may also 

be spelled EpeA.avdia or EpsAavdy. 

'H MovoTurjpaavvia rj AyysAAavdixi) 

8 1151 8 165 =1332 = 666X2. 

" The English Monarchy." 

This is a well-marked system, the definite article being twice expressed. 

A monotyranny is a monarchy, but implying more of the patriarchal idea 

in that government. 

BacrcXeia Tepp-avq^ 

259 407 = 666. 

"An Empire of Germany." 
repiiavTjs is genitive singular of repixavq, a noun feminine of the first de- 
clension, in genitive after Baadsta. 

(21.) *0 Zudraavos 

70 1262 = 1332 = 666 + 666. 
"The Sultan." 

The article here marks this character as well known. If left to himself, 
the Sultan is an autocrat ; but by strange or mysterious concurrences of 
affairs he has long been in company with the English, and may, in this 
sense, be included among the Chrisiain powers. He is, however, included 
among the European powers, and serves as a pivot upon which may turn 
"the balance of power." By him can hardly be meant "the false 
prophet" (a character which our number does not promise to point out), 
for we find in Rev. XIX., 20, that one of the marks of the false prophet 
should be that he should be a worker of miracles. I have never heard of 
the Sultan performing any miracle or pretending to any such performance, 
although, 'tis true, he may do many things that I may be ignorant of. 
Considering him as representing the Mahometan religion, he might repre- 
sent false prophecy ; for, doubtless, there exists in that religion, as well as 
in other religions of the earth, much false prophecy, so much of which 
we are taught was to go forth into and exist in the world. It matters not 
what the name the false prophet goes under, Mahometan, Budhist, or 
other, and however respectable the name under which he goes is deemed, 
there is no necessity whatever for his false prophecy. 

SutAraavos = lod-zaav with the ending. Suil, in Gaelic, is genitive or 
root of Sol, the Sun (for Sol means the Sun in Gaelic as in Latin) ; it also 
means an eye (as the Sun means the eye of day), and so as applied to man 
it would mean an overseer, perhaps an equivalent for Gr. sntaxoTzoq ; but in 
connection with the other part of the compound, as Sultan, it means a 
chief or emperor ; for tan or tain means a region, a territory, as we find in 
many names of countries, say, Brittain, Mauritania, Aquitania, etc. , etc. 
Suil must be the the first part of the compound in the Irish name Sullivan, 
doubtless, originally, Suil-dhubhan, brown chief, and O'Suildhubhain, de- 
scendant of the brown chief. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 401 

(22.) 'Apxrjyoq rpatxsiaq 

982 350 =1332 = 666 + 666. 

"A chief ruler of Greece." 

The first of these nouns is in the nom. of the second and the second in 
the gen. of the first declension. Ap^yoq = Ap%-r)y, double root. Of Ap% = 
Eng. arch, Webster truly concludes the elements to be Rg. It is the 
Gaelic gen. Reach of Righ ; and it is the Eng. Arch in every sense ; as re- 
gards moral character as well as architecture, always implying the idea of 
the curve. We hear of "an arch wag " as well as of an arch of a bridge, 
etc. 'Hy = Gr. root ay in aya*, I lead, begin, originate, etc. , = L. ag, in 
ago, I do, act, originate, etc. , = our standard root Each. 

(23.) UpeXtrou = 666. 
" Israelites." 

This is but a skeleton of the word for Israelites, but it fairly enough 
sets forth the number. It may also fairly represent the frame of a people, 
who live from their wits (not always honorably), and take no interest in 
agricultural production, which is what every nation has to depend on to 
fatten up its frame and maintain any animus in it. 

(24.) raa/jispcxotai IJoAets 

271 395 =666; 

"American States." Not "The American States." 
Here, when we prefix the consonant y with its vowel sound, which is 
wanting before America, we have raafispcxocac, i.e., yaapi-epu, etc., the 
root meaning roof, for house, or a chief; the idea in the root being of 
arch or curve. This expression may possibly have a reference to Mexico 
and to other governments of the^New World outside of these United States. 
But it is certain that the people of these United States in general should 
guard against any one State or any combination of States asserting a 
dominancy over the others or even maintaining a domineering attitude 
towards them, which is so likely to arise from an increase of wealth and 
superstition, and from aping the manners and institutions of monarchial 
nations. There is altogether too much iniquity and folly in this country 
now, and no increase of these is required, but rather an eradicating than 
a suppression of them. 

(25.) '0 reavOrjpdnos 

70 596 = 666. 

"The Man." Not "A Man," in the sense of any man. 
reavdrjpoi:o<; = reavdyp-oitos, this for avdpuiizoc;, in which last the vowel 
belonging before p is transposed, making the one following it long. When, 
in (rsOfUiTzos, we put the vowels in their proper places, in connection with 
their respective consonants, the tj being still to be understood as a double 
vowel, we have them of their proper lengths. The word, according to its 
26 



402 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

derivation, means the erect and superintending being, i.e., animal. The 
root o- in the compound in this sense stands for axo- in stzicxotzos, but the 
full parts, as the word stands, are yeavdrjp-o-os, ysa>6r h o being to be under- 
stood as a diminutive of 0r t p, = <pr)p (= Gaelic compound root fiadh-er) 
and ysav or yeva, birth, offspring. 

And supposing, as some have very properly supposed, av in wtipdiizoq to 
be for the preposition ava, which means, generally, "up," or implies the 
idea of motion from below to above, still the consonant to be prefixed to 
ava is y, the one I have supplied ; for, in the roots ya and ^eva, the verbs 
of origination, the very idea of origin is from below upwards, as of the 
sun rising, which gives us the word orient, of the springing up of water in 
a well, of the coming into existence, etc. The Welsh word for man, i.e., 
person or body, is mynw, from mwn (applied to the neck), which rises up 
or stretches out. According to the foregoing, rsa>dr u o (or Avatf^, if you 
will) is a compound after the same manner as Avea/o;^?, from root revs and 
a.p'/r^. 

I have now clearly proved to be true each general position I have taken 
in the interpretation of the prophecies I have dealt with ; and what follows 
may throw some light on the general scope of this volume, so far, at least, 
as concerns the name and character of the originator of Christianity, and 
may, therefore, be not uninteresting. 

(26.) '0 Kopios xat Zwttjp It)<tou<z Xpurros 

70 800 31 1408 888 1480=4677 = 666X7 + 3X5. 
u The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 

The adjective xupioq, root xups, which becomes a noun with the article 
prefixed (and is used as such without the article), is derived from xupo^ 
root ?.ups, which may be considered first root of xuptos. 

The verbal adjective ypiaroq, which also becomes a noun with the article 
prefixed (and is used as such also without the article), is derived from the 
first root of the verb xP tw t the g- being to be understood as belonging to 
this root in the form of F, T, or t, i.e., in some form of the digamma, 
which certainly appears in the general root of this class. See Aeolic 
Xpo-ouj, root xp'aF, which sets forth the primitive root most fairly of verbs 
of this class : also root xP wr of x.P w ^i a body, the human body, the skin. 
XpTut, as the verbs of this class generally, means to touch lightly the sur- 
face of a body, to graze, rub ; hence to anoint with unguents or oil. The 
word graze, as well as grass, comes to us directly from the Gothic lan- 
guages, and indirectly, also, from the Latinic. In connection with grass 
there are three primary ideas, that of body and its covering and cutting. 
In Gr. aypdHTTis (grass) = ayp, root of aypoq, the field, the country, and 
root <rrc of Griyoq^ a roof, a cover, in this case the compound meaning, 
laterally, the covering of the country. Gr. ypaa-'.^, xpaunq^ xpang ( grass )= 
rpa, root of verb ypcco, to gnaw, to eat; and ots, meaning, as before, a 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 403 

covering (of herbage). Latin gramen (grass) is connected with yprnvtosi 
ypaco, and, therefore, the Latins, as the Gothic nations, seem to have had 
of grass rather the idea of something to be cut or eaten than of a cover- 
ing. This is also the idea of root gras in Sanscrit; Goth., D., and Sw. 
gras ; Dan. graes ; Sax. graes, graed. All these roots imply a covering 
which is to be gnawed, cut, grazed, etc. The word grease is only directly 
represented to us in the Latinic languages (Fr. graisse ; It. grasso ; Sp. 
grasa; Port, graxa). It is undoubtedly connected with Gr. xpeaq, flesh, 
a piece of flesh, a body. The primary idea connected with both grass and 
grease is of body, and that in two ways in both cases. In the case of 
grass we have (first) the idea of body, or the surface of body ; and (sec- 
ond) in connection with and covering this we have the idea of sod (mat of 
grass) as mentally distinguished from the clod or simple body. In the 
case of grease we have the idea of a particular kind of body in a soft 
state, but still of body, analogous to clod. And then we have the idea 
of the extended surface of any kind of body which we may endue with a 
covering of this soft body, as ungument, analogous to a covering of grass. 
That the idea is body or lump, in the case of the latter, is proved by root 
earn of L. caro, flesh ; for this root in Gaelic means a heap or collection 
(of stones). In Sans, the root is kravya, and in Gr. xpsar, there being 
some little transposition and exchange of letters. Now, in the operation 
of "to grease/ ' this soft form of animal body is applied to the surface of 
body (whether of animal or other body) so as to cover it analogously to a 
covering of grass or vegetation where it exists. It indeed greases, grazes, 
shaves (radere), cuts the surface. So, also, "to graze" is to touch or 
cut the surface slightly, to skim lightly over it ; and of animals " to graze " 
is to cut or gnaw (rodere) the herbage, grass, in connection with the sur- 
face. 

Now, "to oil" is, literally, to apply to a body the product or fat of the 
olive tree ; L. oleum, root ole ; Gr. eXawv, olive oil, from eXata (root sXa), 
the olive tree. In oiling, therefore, we, literally, apply a vegetable sub- 
stance. But " to anoint" is, literally, to apply to a body an animal sub- 
stance ; for the root oint we have directly through the French from Latin 
ungo, root ung, to anoint ; and this, donbtless, comes to the Latin from 
the Gaelic ung, unga, ointment, which, in its turn, is from un, flesh. To 
anoint, therefore, properly speaking, is to apply an animal substance or 
body to the surface of another body ; but in the case of this verb it can- 
not be used with any elegance except of the human body. " To anoint," 
therefore, or "to oil," is to apply to body a covering of body, and when 
this covering is of animal matter, when applied to other things than the 
human frame it is with propriety called grease. 

The Hebrew noun M'Shach, Mishchah, or Mashchah means (1) pellis, 
cutis, the skin or outer surface of a body ; or, as Buxtorf explains it, that 
which is drawn out and extended above the surface of the body (from 
M'Shaen, to draw, draw out, etc.). And it means (2) oleum, ungumentum, 



404 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ointment; but whether it meant, literally, ointment or oil it is not easy 
to determine, from the difficulty of tracing the pedigree of words in a lan- 
guage so long unspoken as is the Hebrew. But I find that M'Shach means, 
also, to measure, having as another meaning a portion of land (L. gleba). 
But it appears plain the noun M'Shach is an inflection of Shach, of which, 
or another similar form, I find the meaning to be curved or something 
curved. The form Shchach means to devastate, etc., and it appears to be 
root of Shachal, and Shachatz, a lion, a wild beast. M'Shach, as above, 
doubtless means, literally, ungumentum rather than oleum; and we find 
the Mashiach, Mashuach, or M'Shiach a literal equivalent for the Xpiarus. 

In the case of xP~ l0i t as ^ have said, the primary sense is to rub, graze, 
etc., and the noun representing the ointment seems, in this case, to be 
derived from the verb itself , i.e., xP l<T - aa ( =zf<Tust0> )i the holy anointing oil 
of the Christian Church. Xpiatxa is, however, literally, anything to be 
smeared on as an unguent. Now, with the article prefixed, 6 zpia-oq means 
"the anointed one," and as a representative of Mahshiach it must mean 
"the anointed king;" it must mean anointed in the sense of a king 
anointed. In this sense, therefore, ypiaroq is a veritable noun, and as such 
the root XP 1 has to undergo an analysis and a synthesis. It is evident, 
then, that the consonants xPi with their proper vowels, must represent a 
word for king, according to the ancient idea, and in finding the vowels we 
must seek the original, radical ones. 

First, I may say, the letter / is a letter resresenting kh, i.e., an aspirated 
k. It was introduced into the Greek alphabet about the year 403 B. C, 
and was largely used by grammarians and critics to mark a passage or a 
book as spurious, and, with a dot on each side of it, to mark fine passages, 
etc. But this k in the different Indo-European languages represented dif- 
ferent sounds, from its hard sound in Eng. k to sk, sh, ch (which in Fr. is 
pronounced sh), etc. From this it may at least be concluded that the same 
word, representing the same idea, had a great variety of pronunciations, 
its initial letter being sounded in such a great variety of ways. 

Now, there is a verb in the Greek, a primitive word, which means to 
pour, spread, heap up, etc. This verb is /sw, root /e, but its full root is 
written yjv, i.e., %sf. This I take to be the same with French chef, a head ; 
Sp. jefe; Nor. Fr. and Eng. chief. There is another Greek verb meaning 
"to flow" as applied to water, liquids, and, metaphorically, as to elo- 
quence and the progress of change in general ; as also to living beings 
flowing or flocking together; this verb is also used transitively, i.e., to 
cause to flow, pour, or shed. This verb is Tew, root /fe, but full root 
Vey, i.e., l PeF. If this be the second component of the compound xP'-'i 
it is as likely to be so in the sense of heaping up or flocking together (for 
we speak of the "crest" of a wave and of a "flood" of almost any- 
thing) as it is in the sense of a source, origin, or essential change. 

There is a Gaelic nominative Cu. a chief or leader, gen. con, and an- 
other righ, a king. gen. reach. The former might be represented in the 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 405 

root of zotos, heaped up, etc., verbal adjective of x £w » an( i the latter in 
the root of epoco or l Pow, which means to draw to ones'self, and so protect, 
shield, save. We would thus surely have in the root of xP lffT °s the double 
meaning of anointed, or poured over, and of Savior. If, now, we take 
the nominative Curigh, chief-king, and decline it, we have gen. Cureach. 
first root Cure, which I have shown to be the first root of xupios. As the 
X is merely the aspirated form of the K or C (which was also anciently 
used for S) and the Cu, pronounced by the Scots Cau, and often so writ- 
ten, is, in effect, equivalent to %eF, i.e., Chef, we have thus for our com- 
pound x £U P so t or » by syncope, xp su or XP sF (* e -i XP eaF i t° equal the full 
sound Cureach). But xP eF is X P S $, xP £(TT or XP t<JT i an( i adding oq, the nomina- 
tive masculine ending, we have no verbal adjective, but a noun equalling 
Curigh, who, according to monarchial usage, must needs have been anointed 
in order to be king. The Mahshiagh must needs have been the anointed 
one in being the chief ruler. 

The result is precisely the same, as, according to the foregoing, if the 
second part of the compound be l Pu or 'Peu, root of e/)ow, to save, etc. ; 
and not only so, but if it be 'Peu, root of 'Pew, to flow; for if we could 
trace back far enough, I doubt not, we should find this root to contain the 
primitive or identical idea of Righ, a king (Latin Rex, root Reg ; Sp. Re ; 
Fr. Roi) ; for this same Righ might very properly be written Riv, the root 
of our word river ; and in Eastern Scotland it may have been occasionally 
so written, for the gh and ch they there often represented by v, and the s 
by st, after the Scandinavian fashion. The Scottish name Fergus was the 
Pickish Fergust or Vergust ; and Aengus was their Aengust or Ungust, etc. 

Now, in accordance with the heaping up idea implied in the roots x eo i 
etc., I may say that our word head is properly heav-ed (Sax. heafod, 
kefed, heafd), or that which is heaved up or elevated ; and heaven is 
heav-en (Sax. heafen hefen, heofen), from Sax. heafen, to heave, signi- 
fying elevated or arched. See Ger. hanpt and kopf ; Goth, haubith; L. 
caput; Gr. xe<paXr), i.e., xe<p-a\, with the case ending, a root which is equiv- 
alent to xe<p-ap, sinoe A and p are commonly interchangeable ; and, thus, 
xe<pap would be but a longer form of xap, root of xaprj or xapa, also mean- 
ing a head ; for we can here consider the <p only the f sound of the digamma, 
and so xeFap or xeuap, by the dropping of digamma, would naturally be- 
come xsap or xap. 

But the Sanscrit Cura, Cirsha, bring us round again, pro illustrations, 
from x eu) t £ P £U) , an d 'Peoj, if not to xupoq and xuptoq, yet to Corsica, root 
Corsic, i.e., Cuirseach, which, in the one sense, may possibly represent the 
yoip and the 2eu (see Zeuq) ; aud in the other sense, two principal appella- 
tions of the ancient Ard-Righ. I would think that Corsica might also 
mean a habitation of some kind, say = Eng. church ; and that the root 
Se (originally Su ; as Fi in Fiadh was originally Fu) derived its sense of 
cutting primarily from the 'tusk, then from the chase, which includes the 
idea of cutting as well as of driving, pressing, etc. Compare the mean- 



406 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ings of Zeuu), root leu, and #so>, root 6zu, which are to each other akin, the 
the former of which may be derived from Suq, which would show full root 
of that word to be Zsu. The full root in Greek is evidently 2eu, which is 
equivalent to Goth, root Swe, perhaps root of Svea, an ancient name of 
Sweden, and of Swein, a name common of Scandinavians and their kings. 

Some lexicographers suppose 2'uc to be derived from leuw ; but I con- 
sider snch a derivation at least improbable. Zu<; is simply 6<?, more justly 
vuq, with the 2 prefixed, and so from the fuller form of the root, namely, 
2su (the e in this root being a variation of u ), it is not unlikely the verb 
Hew proceeds. It is more reasonable in this case that the verb should arise 
from the idea of " rushing " implied in the noun than that the latter should 
arise from the verb. We sometimes may think a noun arises from a verb 
which really does not, as will appear from what follows : When we speak of 
the chase we properly speak in relation to the boar ; but when we speak of 
the hunt we properly speak in relation to the hounds (Sax. hundes). It 
might, to some, appear at first sight that chase is a metamorphosis of x ot Pi 
the x being ch, and the s being in early times interchangeable with p ; but 
it is much more likely that chase is the representative of either of other 
two forms, namely, Chuk or the Heb. form Chazir, which may be re- 
garded as the same root. In relation to the word chase, opposite to which 
he arranges (Fr. Chasser; Arm. Chaczeal; Sp. Cazer; Port. Cacar, etc.), 
Webster says : " The elements are eg or ck, and the change of a palatal to 
a sibilant resembles that in brace." It is seen that among the Kelatic 
people, althoug cu or cun had a double meaning, yet when applied to a 
man it was their highest title of honor ; and so appears clear the affinity 
between the roots gog, cog, hog, cun, kung, koenig, konge, etc., among 
the Asiatic and European peoples. 

Now, in relation to the number word /£<: (p. 451 of this volume), it 
has been shown that the £ is, or rather has been, commutable with the /J, 
for to the /> belongs the aspirate ( c ), which makes it equivalent to y<; or ks, 
i.e., to c. In ancient times it was simply an interchange of equivalents. 
But while the simple, firm sound of the p sets forth unity or a simple idea 
or relation, the complex sound of the $ or ks sets forth complexity or a 
complex idea or relation. So, while the word xpter, the root of xpioroq, sets 
forth a simple idea and unity, the x^ta-c sets forth a complex idea and con- 
fusion, i.e., confusion taken strictly in its literal sense; for, doubtless, the 
confounding of the y and c sound, in order to form the complex sound 
of £, is meant principally to symbolize the confounding of the church 
with the state, which is in contradistinction to the simple idea of the king- 
dom of God on earth implied in the church of Christ itself. But it was 
designed to symbolize much more, namely, all that would result from the 
union of the church with the state, which would tend to the setting up, 
existence, and prevalence in the world of a religion, falsely called by the 
name of Christ. The religion of Christ is a simple religion, namely, " the 
life of self-denial and of active godliness in the case of human beings indi- 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 407 

vidually and collectively, in their relation to each other and to God." But 
what a Babylon did take the place of this simple religion, and has long 
and widely prevailed under the assumed name of Christ, but acting at 
variance with his precepts and spirit ! We, in our age, from the change 
things have taken for the better in the good providence of God towards 
us, can hardly form a just judgment of the spirit and action of govern- 
mental Christianity during the fifteen centuries preceding our time. 

We are now advanced far enough to know that the roots of the words 
xuptoq and ipisToq were either originally identical or that they are equiv- 
alents, i.e., that root xupt is equivalent to xp c< ^ or XP l<7r i an( ^ conversely. 
And our word to create, Latin creo, root ere, is the same with root xups, 
i.e., xpeu or xpeF, for Webster very properly considers (judging from the 
root in Irish, which language, with the Gothic, as to roots in our modern 
languages he generally uses as a convenient criterion) that the Latin root 
is shortened by the loss of a letter. See Welsh creu ; Ir. cruth ; Arm. 
croui ; and Heb. bara (in which last we have the root consonants of the 
others if the b be changed into c, a very common change indeed). And 
the root XP £ or XP eu i from its origin and history, is equivalent to either 
of these other forms ; for each of these roots represents a being who 
begins or originates ; and in the ancient idea, at least in regard to worldly 
affairs, the king or xP tffT °s was decidedly he who begun and originated. 
The king or xP lffT °s was the xupioq, xparwp, or xpearyp. To begin is 
simply to gin or originate. In the Greek the ancient root is ya, which 
implies simple existence, and we may, for illustration, represent it by the 
Gaelic Cu or Cau. But the common Greek root is yews, ysva, or yetv, which 
means to generate, to produce, to originate, and may for illustration, like- 
wise, be represented by the Gaelic Cun, Cean, gin ; Welsh Cun, gen, gan, 
etc. All those words are related to our word Can, which represents ability 
and leaves no doubt of it. 

All men are satisfied that Christ was both prophet and priest. Now I 
have proved him to be king from the implication of his title, xp^^t, of 
which, in this sense, the root is xP i<TT i n0 ^ XP L - Of course he was neither 
king nor priest in the worldly sense of these terms, but in a sense infinitely 
higher, as he was also a prophet superior to all prophets. All this being 
so, the very roots of the name xP t(TT should reasonably imply that all good 
may be expected to flow from Christ to those who live an actively godly 
life. 

But all we have seen now may show us that the roots xupt and xups are 
simply variations of the root vowel to set forth a variation of ideas which 
at the same time sets forth the real case with respect to roots xP lu an ^ XP eu 
or xpis and XP £ *, Now this last character in this last root is no other than 
the Chal. and Oriental Vau, Gr. digamma (F) turned over (for those an- 
cient Orientals, contrary to the Greek method, wrote from right to left) ; 
and this Vau, especially as written in this last way, which approaches the 
form of the Samaritan Vau turned over, 'comes into English as St, thus, 



408 CREATOR AXD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

XP' ffT for ypiF or yp'-i. Compare, for illustration, <rra, first root of IaTrjp.'., 
and of Latin sto, which means to stand, i.e., to stand out or exist; and Za 
(for TVa), root of Zaw, to live, i.e., to stand out or exist; also, root ya 
of yaw, mentioned above, the primitive form of yeva or ysiv, which first- 
named root means simply existence, and the second, with this signification, 
means also to cause to exist, to beget, etc. Also, 6e or da, first root of 
Ttdrjfxt, which first root means simply to exist, i.e., in place; and Sanscrit 
dadhama from dha. (I may remark here for the benefit of some readers 
that the reduplication of the root, either in Sanscrit, Greek, or Latin, 
changes its meaning from intransitive to transitive. ) 

This illustration tends to show the mutability of these consonants and 
consonantal combinations, and it is certain that in the Oriental and Celtic 
tongues, the c or y, and S, T, D, and F, were very closely akin. As I 
took occasion to state before, the Arabic gimmel appears to be an aspira- 
ted form of the Gaelic T, and the Samaritan or ancient Hebrew T and D, 
having changed place at' least as to apparent form, leaves us not to wonder 
at what really has place in the German, that the sound of their D and T, 
as compared with those sounds in the other languages, are completely in- 
terchanged. The form of the T in the Hebrew, leaves us to suspect that 
it originated in a kind of S, and that it may have been originally pro- 
nounced with a kind of an St sound. 

See, farther, Irsap, root <rrsa-r, fat, as tallow or suet; and map, liquid 
fat, indeclinable, bat the root, for what we know to the contrary, may be 
ittar ; also, Ir. meith ; so that we have ar, -, m and f , as in our word fat, 
all equal to each other. Taking now the expression, '0 Kupioq xai Iio-rqp 
It)<tous Xpiaroq, which = 666 X 7 -\- 5 X 3, and Latinicising it by changing 
the i in xupws, xat, and ypiaxoq into e, we have — 
*0 Kupsoq xas Icdttjp It]<tou<; Xpzcroq 
70 795 26 1408 888 1475 = 4662 = 666 X 7. 
But this would be openly violating the expression and degrading the heav- 
enly man to the earthly idea ; a bringing down of that sublime and celes- 
tial idea of the Son of God to that of the mere carnal and worldly man. 
Xpiaroq is not written otherwise than as Xp'.aroq in any language, so far 
as the vowel i is concerned (Sax. Crist ; W. Crist ; Ir. Criost), and it will be 
proper that this uniformity be always maintained, and that the mind be 
kept elevated from flesh and sense, from the mere man, to things divine, to 
Him who is infinitely superior to mere man and to all angels and spirits. 
While the particular affinities, if we may so speak, displayed by onr 
criterion in the above general demonstration, might be thought to indicate 
especially that portion of our species, which, relatively to the masses from 
age to age, constitute the predaceous ; yet the allinclusiveness of the 
language might be thought as surely to indicate that God hath concluded 
as more or less under sin all mankind, so that none might glory in his pres- 
ence, but that ail should stand toward him in the position and relation of 
obedient and dutiful children to a wisely-disposing and benevolent parent. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 409 



On the Zodiac and the Cycles of the Chaldeans, Phoenicians 
and Eastern Nations Generally as well as of the Ancient 
Irish. 

The word zodiac is of Indo-Scythic origin, " The Hindu Zodi- 
ac," says Sir Wm. Jones, " was invented before the dispersion by 
the first progenitors of that race. It was not borrowed from 
Arabs, or Greeks ; and since the Solar division of it in India is the^ 
same in substance with that used in Greece we may reasonably con- 
clude that both Greeks and Hindus received it from an older na- 
tion who first gave names to the luminaries of heaven and from 
whom both Greeks and Hindus, as their similarity in language 
evinces, had a common descent. " 

It is thought the Chaldaeans may have arranged the constella- 
tions or signs of the Zodiac as we have them. This they did by 
means of the celestial alphabet with stars on the several parts of the 
alphabetic characters, as we are told by Kabbi Chomer. Each 
character had a certain fixed number of stars in various directions, 
which were placed so as to form the principal stars of the constel- 
lations. These constellations being imagined to present the ap- 
pearance of certain animals were called after those which they 
were supposed to resemble, such as the lion, the bear, the bull, 
etc. 

Those alphabetic characters were, and are still used as numerals 
and were so used by the Brahmins, as we learn from Sir Wm. Jones 
who tells us that the Hindus have a sacred alphabet, whose charac- 
ters are believed to have been taught to the Brahmins by a voice 
from heaven. 

" The Indians suppose," says Bailly (p. 71), " that the life of 
man is written beforehand upon the head of each infant by Brah- 
ma ; on the other hand they suppose that the actions of men are 
written on the stars and announced by the movements and the as- 
pects of those stars." Origen seems to have had something of that 
idea for he says *■ that heaven is a book filled with characters ; the 
stars so many signs, which denote the fate of men and of king- 
doms : to read them is above the ordinary capacity of men ; they 
may attain it and sometimes do." 

The Chaldaeans and the ancient Irish named each letter of the al- 
phabet after some tree, and the former as well as the Sabeans, 



410 CKEATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

dedicated each species of tree to certain stars, planting them in 
their name and supposing they partook of their virtues and did dis- 
course with them in their sleep. From the Chaldee Satal, a plan- 
tation of trees dedicated to the constellations, comes the Latin 
Stella, a star; in old French astelle and estelle, a plantation; 
whence estoile, now etoile, a star. 

These alphabetic characters, used as numerals, have given names 
to cycles and cyclic deities; but before we proceed with this subject 
it is necessary to exhibit the Chaldaic and Greek alphabets as nu- 
merals ; the latter you have had before, but we will now give them 
side by side as follows : — 

Chald. Greek. 

tf 1 

n 2 

5 3 
1 4 

n 5 

1 6 

i 7 

n 8 

Lj 9 

S 10 

j 20, when final ^ = 500. 

h 30 ' 

£ 40, when final CD = 600, 

j 50, when final <j = 700. 

D 60 

y 70 

£} 80, when final f\ = 800. 

5f 90, when final, w = 900. 
100 ' 



P 

i 
ri 4oo 



i 200 
ftf 300 



A 


1 


B 


2 


r 


3 


A 


4 


E 


5 


F 


6 


Z 


7 


H 


8 


8 


9 


I 


10 


K 


20 


A 


30 


M 


40 


N 


50 


S 


60 





70 


n 


80 


3 


90 


<] 


900 


P 


100 


I 


200 


T 


300 


Y 


400 


Q 


500 


X 


600 


¥ 


700 


w 


800 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 411 

The Chaldaeans expressed to the number 900, as follows : — 

*■? was called the final caph and stood for 500 
C3 the final mem and stood for . 600 



f the " nun " " " 

U U y^c. (t 11 it 



700 
800 
900 



F| " " pe 

tf " " tzadde " 

To express 1000, they recommenced with K, that is with the 
Aleph having two points over it; & i stood for 2000 and so on; 
and this is the Jewish mode of numbering also. 

What is now called a year in Scripture, as Costard remarks, 
must, in very early times, have been termed Yamin, days, i.e., 
a system or cycle of days. From this same root is derived the 
Ethiopic amy, and the Arabic aum, a year, as well as the Irish aim- 
Sire, a revolution of time, from Sar, a revolution, a measure, from 
whence the famous Chaldaean cycle Sarus, consisting, as according 
to Berosus, of 6660 days. But this was the Sarus-hafre or tenfold 
Sarus, 6(^6 X 10. Polyhistor, Abydenus and Syncellus inform us 
the Sarus was a period of 3,600 years ; but Suidas, an author con- 
temporary with Syncellus, says it was a period of lunar months 
amounting to 18J years, or 222 moons. Sir Isaac Newton agrees 
with Suidas as to the limit of the Sarus ; but then the Sarus 
they had in view must have been, not the simple Sarus, but the ten- 
fold Sarus, as appears proved by the numerals of the celestial alpha- 
bet which compose the word : — 

360 days in a lunar year. 
18 years. 



s 


itf 


= $00 


A 


V 


70 


R 


*> 

1 


200 


U 


1 


6 


s 


f 


90 

666 
10 



6480 days. 
180 " in 6 lunar months. 



6660 days in 18 years, 6 months. 
1 Saros, which X by Hafre or 10 = 6660 days. 



6660 ; 222 moons X 30 days = 6660 days. 
The most celebrated periods, ascribed to the invention of the 
Chaldaeans, were, indeed, the Sosos, Sarus and Nereus. 
The Sosos contained 60 days. 
" Sarus " 6660 days, i.e., the 10 fold Sarus. 
" Nereus " 1110 " or one-sixth 
of a Sarus=37 moons 



412 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOG1ES , ETC. 

Berosus used these periods in making his chronological calcula- 
tions and fixing the epochs of the history of Babylon. But the 
works of Berosus have been rendered very obscure by the action 
of interpreters and there are many contradictions among modern 
authors as well upon the numbers of years that composed these 
famous periods respectively as upon the uses they may have been 
applied to. That the first king of Chaldaea, should have reigned 
ten Sari, as according to Berosus, will not appear so wonderful if 
we take Suidas' calculation of 222 moons to a Sams. This would 
make his life or reign 185 years, the period of the life of Isaac, ac- 
cording to Josephus ; but then those who are made to reign 18 
Sari, even in this same calculation, would have had a period of 
333 years. 

There is, however, good reason to think that the tenfold Sarus, 
i.e. 9 6660 days or 222 lunations or 18£ years, as above, was the 
Sarus the Chaldseans made use of in their calculations ; for 
Syncellus informs us the Chaldseans reckoned 120 Sari to have 
passed from the Creation to the Deluge and 120 multiplied by 18J 
equals 2220 years. The Septuagint and Josephus make the time 
from the Creation to the Deluge 2256 years, which is not far dif- 
ferent. This approximates to the Egpptian " reign of the sun," 
which they say was a period of 2340 years and " the reign of the 
Peris " of the Persians was 2000 years : the period of their " third 
age " some of the Hindoo philosophers made 2000 years. 

The Narri or Nereus, as seen above, contained one-sixth of a 
Sarus or 1110 days, which is equal to 37 lunations, or three years' 
two of which consisted of 12 months each and one of 13 months. 
The word was formed of the following numerals : 

N final=700 
R =200 
R 200 

I 10 



1110 days=37 lunations. 

The Sos or Sosos was the letter Samech, q=60. The applica- 
tion of this numeral alphabet may tend to many useful discoveries 
in ancient history. No lexicon, for instance, will explain why the 
Jews called the new moon ri\ Yah. But, as is well known, they 
referred all the time of the silent or dark moon to the old moon, 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 413 

and, because the first appearance was usually about 18 hours after 
the true conjunction, they, therefore, began their month from 
the sixth hour or evening, that is at sunset, next after the 18th 
hour from the conjunction and this rule they called Yah. It is a 
word compounded of two numerals which make up that number, 
viz. : 

^=10 

ri = 8 



18 

This word, Yah, the Jews would pronounce Tshah, and some con- 
sider it remarkable that the same word, as applied to the moon, 
should be common to the Irish. In the latter language Re signifies 
the moon (as it does the sun in Egyptian) and in the old Irish 
Lexicons Tshei-re is explained by Coitus lunae, intermestris lunse, 
interlunium, all meaning the time of new moon, when it is in con- 
junction with the sun. 

Some learned men have been of the opinion that there was only 
one primitive language among men, of which the celestial alphabet 
was the exponent. "The vestiges of a primeval language " says Mr. 
Maurice (Ind. Ant. vol. VII. p. 572) " in every dialect of the ancient 
world are clearly traced in the elaborate work of the Count de 
Gebelin ; and though Sir William Jones, in one of his dissertations, 
seems to doubt the existence of the remains of this universal lan- 
guage, yet, in various preceding essays, that great linguist un- 
equivocally assented to the prevalence of one primitive tongue 
throughout the early branches of the Noachic family ; referring even 
the sublime invention of the letters and the origin of astronomy 
itself, in which science it appears extremely probable the celestial 
asterisms were first designated by the letters of the alphabet, to the 
children of Ham in Chaldsea." 

In the order of origination de Gebelin thought numerals to have 
followed letters, the original number of which he supposed was 16. 
The Easterns finding these insufficient for numeration added six 
others ; and the Arabs, not finding twenty-two sufficient, added, for 
the greater convenience of numeration, six letters more, making in 
all twenty-eight. 

Other authors, however, think they have reasons for concluding 
that numerals preceded letters and some of them illustrate the 
matter by supposing a Chaldaean explaining in what manner the 



414 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Saros was made up of numerals : He would first begin with Shin 
or 300, then proceed to Ain or 70, then to Ris or 200, and so on to 
Vau and Tsade : By repeating those numerals quick Shin would be 
pronounced as Sh, Ain as a, Ris as r, Yau as v and Tsade as ts or s. 
This would naturally produce the idea of giving the literal power of 
Sh to t^' of a to y of r to ^ etc., which they think, perhaps mis- 
takingly, was the origin of letters from numerals. 

Of this position the Hebrew word i£b Sepher, meaning to number, 
numeration, numbering, is considered a strong proof; but after 
numerals were applied, as literary characters, the same word de- 
noted, as it does to-day, a scribe, a letter, a book. 

" The word sepher," says Bates, "has all the senses of the 
Latin calculus and calculo, and that for the like reason from the 
use of small, white stones in numbering, reckoning and record- 
ing ; and when writing with letters was revealed, it was applied to 
the new method of calculating, and, therefore, signifies an account, 
whether by number, memorial, monument, book, letter or voice." 
Bates here refers to the saphire stone, but others see the origin of 
the word in the Egyptian language, in which schiepi is to number. 
That the word signifies to number Leigh is positive. " Some 
authors," says he, " are positive that the word sappir, whence 
saphire, comes from sepher, because of the number of little stars, 
which shine in that kind of stone." This seems to have in it also 
a grain of truth, for Sepher is evidently aiaother form for Sether, 
which is the original of our word star. According to the position 
that numerals were the parents of letters, Sepher, to number, 
might allude to the starry or celestial characters, first intended to 
represent the constellations. 

Sepher is also used to express the interpretation of dreams, as 
in Gen. XLI., 8 : " but there was none that could interpret them 
unto Pharaoh." The Chaldaeans practiced what is called judicial 
astrology; and in the operation of expounding dreams they are 
supposed to have had recourse to calculation by the stars and the 
starry alphabet. Our word cypher and the French chiffre are de- 
rived from the Chaldaean word sepher 

Hence the sephiroth, or tree of numbers, of the caballistic Jews, 
a tree which contained ten divine names, viz., corona, sapientia, 
prudentia, dementia, gravitas,ornatus, triumphus, confessio laudis, 
fundamentum, regnum. The reason the number ten was fixed on 
was probably because, in the ancient idea, that number was called 



APPENDIX. TO VOLUME II. 415 

perfection, as from thence all nations begin to count anew; the 
Egyptians expressed 10 by the word mid, that is perfection, and 
the Irish have it deag, meaning, besides, good, perfect, &c. For 
this reason the Chaldaeans formed the Yod, or number 10, by an 
equilateral triangle, J, daleth, which was the symbol of perfection 
with the Egyptians; and the symbol of the Almighty One with the 
druids of the British Isles, who carved it on the bark of the sacred 
oak. The Egyptians doubled the triangle, thus making the letter 
X or ten, that is, perfection, being the perfect number, or the num- 
ber of fingers on both hands; hence it stood for ten with the 
Egyptians, Chinese, Phoenicians, Romans, as with us in the ex- 
pression of captions. The Mexicans, also, used the same figure in 
their secular calendars. The Tatars called it lama from the Scy- 
thian lamh, a hand, synonymous to the Yod of the Chaldaeans. 
Thus it became the name of a cross and the title of the high-priest 
with the Tatars of Thibet. In the Irish, lamh means a hand, and 
a variation of it, viz., luam, signifies, an Abbot, or head of a 
church. 

From the number X all. nations begin a new reckoning, because 
it is the number of fingers on both hands, which were the original 
instruments of numbering ; hence Yod., in Hebrew is the hand and 
the number ten as is lamh with the Tatars and Scythians. 

Sophocles, quoted by Strabo, informs us, in regard to the Idaei 
Dactyli or Curetes, that they were called Idaei because they 
inhabited mount Ida, and Dactyli from the Greek word dactulus, 
signifying a finger, they being at first ten in number, which is the 
number of fingers on the hands. From this it is clear that they 
were originally called Yod, that is ten and that mount Ida, where 
they dwelt was so named from them, the ten fingers, literally. 
Strabo reckons five brothers and says they had as many sisters, in 
all ten ; among the brothers he names Hercules and Paeon, which 
some think meant one and the same person, viz., Hercules Phani, 
the Irish Phenius, the author of letters and numerals. Herodotus 
brings these Curetes out of Phoenicia with Cadmus, and Sir Isaac 
Newton supposes that, having followed Cadmus out of Phoenicia, 
some of them settled in Phrygia, where they were called Corybantes, 
a name which some think they derived from Cherub, a Phoenician 
word signifying valiant, and others from Ghariba Arabic Karibi, 
Scythian Carb, that is, a ship, from their being great navigators 
and ship-builders. Herodotus says they were skilled in all the arts 



416 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and sciences of Phoenicia and we know that ship-building and navi- 
gation were among the arts most practiced there. This Hercules, 
one of the Iclaei Dactyli, is said by Cicero to have come out of 
Egypt and to have taught the Phrygians letters. It is strange, if 
this were so, that he did not use Egyptian characters instead of 
Phrygian. Would the Hercules referred to have been the King 
Neilos, who is called Hercules Harpokrates, as XXVIth in Eratos- 
thenes' list, and whom I find to have been father of that Gaedhal 
(or Gaethar, the Egyptian 1 being the same with the r), who was 
ancestor of the Gaels of the British Isles ? Their history represents 
this Gaedhal as having been educated at Thebes in the varied wis- 
dom of the Egyptians and so we might suppose both him and his 
father, Neil, to have been acquainted with the Phrygian language. 
Both those persons are, also, represented as being contemporary 
with Moses and the Exodus ; but the chronology does not allow 
me to see how this last could possibly have been the case. 
Clemens tells us the Phrygian letters, used by the Idaei Dactyli, 
were the same as were inscribed in the temple of Ephesus and 
thence called Ephesian letters; they were in fine, sacred, mysterious 
characters, doubtless the same as or alike to the Ogham cyphers; 
and wherever this Hercules went we hear of his sacred and mys- 
terious inscriptions. Apollonius Tyaneus, speaking of the temple 
of Hercules at Gadiz, says of the pillars and inscriptions : " They 
were quadrangular, as if prepared in the forge, and on their capitals 
were inscribed letters, not Egyptian, nor Indian nor indeed known 
to any one in the temple ; but Hercules himself inscribed them in 
the temple of the Fates." 

We will now say something upon the words which represent the 
most simple cycles : let us take the Herakles of the Greeks of 
which Erekles is as correct a reading and the Janus of the Latins, 
whose hands were marked by the Greeks with, T SJZ and, of which 
Janes is quite as correct a reading, we shall have : — 

E= 5 / *= 10 r=300 

P — 100 N j = 50 5— 60 

E— 5 £,i=5 E= 5 

K= 20 S tr/ =300 

A= 30 365 

E= 5 365 
^=200 

365 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 417 

All these are names referring to the sun, who is called in this 
connection king of fire, prince of the world, etc. 

Neilos (Nile) in Egyptian signified a year, also the sun ; and it 
will be found that the numerals taken from the Egyptian alphabet 
forming that word make up the number of days of the sun's appar- 
ent revolution round the earth : — 



N: 




50 


E 


= 


5 


I 


= 


10 


A 


= 


30 





= 


70 


I 


= 


200 



365 

The Greeks were, doubtless, mistaken in supposing that the 
Egyptians worshiped the river Nile. " The Egyptians," says 
Eustathius, "have indicated the quantity of a year, namely, 365 
days, by the word Neilos." " Nothing," says Aristides, " was 
held by the Egyptians in so great honor and worshiped so religious- 
ly as Neilos." 

The Egyptians had another cycle called Loskoe, made up of 
1825 days, or five years ; which corresponded to the Irish Losca, 
whence the Latin Lustrum : — 



L = 


30 


= 


800 


S = 


900 


K = 


20 


= 


70 


E = 


5 



1825 days or 365 X 5. 

This is the Egyptian numeration. The fifth year consisted of 
366 days or rather the fourth ; for they added one day between the 
end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth, which method 
Eudoxus brought with him from Egypt to Greece. 

In the Assyrian dialect Bel was called Pel or Pul, and by doub- 



27 



418 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ling some of the letters in the Chaldaean they made out the word 
Eppollo (for Apol, Pael or Baal) : — 

Coptic and Greek. Chald. 



B = 


2 


# = 


8 


A = 


30 


E = 


5 


N = 


50 


= 


70 


2= 


200 



En 


= 


5 


P6 


== 


80 


P£ 




80 


°V 


= 


70 


Lb 


= 


30 


Lb 


= 


30 


Oy : 




70 



B 


n = 


2 


E 


»i== 


5 


L 


b = 


30 


E 


h= 


8 


N 


j = 


50 





v = 


70 


S 


w = 


200 



365 365 365 

Mithras in the Greek and Mithrak in the Chaldaic are both from 
the root Mithr, a cycle. They both signify the sun or the sun 
God: — 

Chald. Greek. 



M 


tf = 40 


E 


rt= s 


I 


S = 10 


TH 


10= 9 


R 


i =200 


A 


tf = 1 


K 


j> = 100 



M = 


40 


E = 


5 


I = 


10 


= 


9 


P = 


100 


A = 


1 


2 = 


200 



365 365 

St. Jerome says that by Abraxas the Basilidians meant the Al- 
mighty God. But this was only a name of the sun, just as 
Mithra : — 

Coptic and Greek. 
A == 1 
B= 2 

P = 100 
A = 1 
£=60 
A = 1 
2"z=200 



( 


Chaldaic. 


A 


K = 1 


B 


a= 2 


R 


i =200 


A 


K = 1 


K 


D =100 


A 


tf = 1 


S 


D = 60 



365 365 

The surname Sabasius, in the monuments of Mithras, which has so 
much exercised antiquaries, is but a repetition of the same idea and 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 419 

number in other letters from the Chaldee Sabb, to encircle ; Siba, 
a revolution : — 



Chaldaic. 


S 


itf = 


300 


A 


tf = 


1 


B 


s = 


2 


A 


# = 


1 


S 


b = 


60 


A 


x = 


1 



365 



Greek. 


/ = 


10 


= 


70 


Z=z 


200 


A = 


1 


B — 


2 


B = 


2 


= 


70 


E = 


5 



Greek. 


/ = 


10 


= 


70 


2 = 


200 


il = 


1 


B — 


2 


B = 


2 


= 


70 


/ = 


10 



360 365 



The epithet Sabasius was given to Jupiter and to Bacchus, signify- 
ing only a periodical deity. But Sobe in Chaldaic signifies Ebrius, 
potator; and Boulanger very properly observes that the name 
Bacchus originated with the Scythians, in whose language Baccam 
is to cry, to howl, and hence their howling orgies. Would not the 
fundamental idea in this latter also be of intoxication from the 
juice of the bacca (Latin, a berry)? 

The Io Sabbos of the Greeks was nothing more than the numerals 
of the lunar year altered from Sabasa, with the ejaculation Io, pre- 
fixed. Boulanger says that when the suppliant was initiated into 
the mysteries of Sabasius, a serpent, the symbol of revolution was 
thrown upon his breast. " The early histories of the ancient na- 
tions," says Sir Wm. Jones (Chron. Hind.), " are nothing more 
than the history of the revolutions of the sun, moon and planets." 

The Egyptians worshiped the moon under the form of a cat, 
whose name counts the number of days in the calendar month ; 
the lunar year they called Lebnos, a word which counts the number 
of days in the calendar year : — 

K = 20 A = 30 

A = 1 H= 8 

T = 9 B = 2 

N= 50 

30 = 70 

£=200 

360 



420 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

In the Egyptian language Lebnos signified a bowl. The Egyptians 
imposed much upon the Greeks and concealed their knowledge un- 
der puerile evasions which were greedily swallowed by some of the 
wisest of the Greek travelers. 

Diodorus tells us that the priests appointed thereto in the temple 
of Osiris filled, every day, 360 bowls with milk, to preserve in 
memory the number of days in a lunar year. «' I think," says 
Sir I. Newton, " he means one bowl every day, in all 360, to count 
the number of days in the calendar year, and thereby to find out 
the difference between this and the true solar year, to the end of 
which they added five days ; and the Israelites brought this year out 
of Egypt." Sir Isaac seems not to have noticed that Neilos was 
their solar year in numerals. 

The common Egyptian name of the sun is Phre, that is, re with 
the article, ph, prefixed. This represented in memorial characters 
a period called the Phoenix, which Martianus, in his hymn to the 
sun, tells us was expressed in three letters, comprising the number 
608. 

Salve vera Deum facies, vultusque paterae, 
Octo et sexcentis numeris, cui litera trina, 
Conformat sacrum nomen, cognomen et nomen. 

— (De Nuptiis Philologiae, p. 43.) 

The Greeks, too, had an enigmatical name of the sun, consisting 
of three letters, and corresponding to the Egyptian : — 

From the 
Egyptian Numerals. Greek. 

<P Ph=500 r=400 

P R=100 #= 8 

ri E= 8 2'=200 



608 608 

Phre corresponds to the Hindu Phira, cycle, revolution, Ues, 
according to Hesychus, means Bacchus, the Sun. But its first 
meaning is Jupiter, in the sense of Jupiter Pluvius, the root mean- 
ing being to wet, moisture, rain. 

When Basnage gave it as his opinion that the Jews and Chal- 
daeans borrowed their mode of numbering from the Egyptians he 
remarks : " They found the number 365 in the name of the river 
Nile." But how can this be so if the Nile's name in Egyptian be 
Ameiri, that is, of a blue color, and Iaru, that is, river? The 
Scripture's name of that river is Iar. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 421 

If the Latin name Janes had been formed from Egyptian, Coptic 
or Greek numerals instead of Chaldaic, it would have been Ianet 
or Inet, which, if the first meaning be fire, would appear to be cor- 
rect, the Irish Teinne being fire. Instead of the Greek form 
Herakles, we have, also, the Chaldaic form Erecoell, which would 
appear to be an original : — 

Coptic and Egyptian. 

1= 10 

N= 50 

E= 5 

T=300 

365 



Chaldean. 


Eri= 


5 


Ri= 


200 


Eri= 


5 


Cj= 


20 


Oy= 


70 


Eri= 


5 


hh= 


30 


Lh= 


30 



365 

While some have supposed the word Almanac to be derived from 
an Arabic word signifying computation or calculation, we have not 
found that this is so. There appears no such word in the Arabic 
with this signification. In Hebrew* mana or mene signifies to num- 
ber ; doubtless connected with the root of our word moon, month. 
The Almanac among the ancients, besides general numeration, 
marked the time of the rising and setting of the planets, eclipses, 
etc. The Arabic and Persian words for an Ephemeris are Rooz- 
nameh, Tukweem, Roozeaneh, Roozeeneh. It is barely a conjec- 
ture that the Arabs and Greeks borrowed the word Almanak from 
the Chaldaeans, with whom the numerals comprised in it made up 
the number of days in a year. 

Chaldaean. 

E ri= 5 
L b= 30 
M b= 40 
A J?= 70 
N j= 50 
A v= 70 
K p=100 

365 



422 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

Among the Egyptians the letters So and Jauda, or S and I, made 
up the number 16, and Si, in the Egyptian, signifies to take a wife. 
Therefore, by the number 16, the Egyptians represented an act of 
this kind, voluptalem Sedecim pingunt. For the same reason 
science was represented by the number 1095. 

Some of the Cycles of the Ancient Irish. 

That astronomy was cultivated to a good degree by the ancient 
Irish appears beyond doubt and the terms they used in connection 
therewith proves them or the science to them to have been derived 
from Babylonia. 

The smallest cycle of their astronomers was the apparent daily 
revolution of the sun, reckoning from sunset to sunset. This they 
named lilai from liladh to turn round, to turn. Lalai was at 
length corrupted to la, li, lavi, the astronomical name of a day; 
plural lavina and laoth ; whence the Greek Geneth-lion, a birth- 
day, and the Ethiopic lathath, days, as in amathath wa lathath, 
years and days. 

The Hebrew lexicographers derive lil, the night, from lal, to 
turn round, one turn of the globe. Parkhurst finds the root not 
to occur as a verb, but that the idea is to wind, to turn or move 
around, whence lilim, a winding stairs. The word la appears to 
have been applied to the space between sunrise and sunset being 
hours, usually designated by Iugh, labor, day, whence an Iugh, 
this day, to-day ; Chaldaic yaga, laborare : Arabic yakh, a day. 
It was also applied to the night or to the whole 24 hours. 

Dia, dae, du, dua, the same varied, was the Irish word form gen- 
erally used for labor, day-light. The Greek Due, labor and the 
Chald, Duah, fatigued with labor, corresponds to this. But the 
Irish poets and astronomers had an expression for a day, namely, 
faigh or faic-iula, a turn of the horizon, from the Arabic afak, the 
horizon ; poetically a day, at the end of which a man laid himself 
down noiche, i.e., a rest; and hence, nocht Ir. for night, Gr. 
root nukt, Latin noct ; Chald, nouch, rest, nucha, to cease from 
labor. 

The Ir. word bheo, a day, is supposed to have originally meant 
night; for it appears to be the same with the Egyptian Pheu, 
translated day ; but the Egyptians began their day at midnight, 
from whom, it is said, Hippocrates introduced that way of reckon- 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 423 

ing into astronomy, and Copernicus and others followed him until this 
method prevailed over all Europe. The Numidians of Africa had 
this practice ; and in several parts of Germany, it is said, they still 
begin their days at sunsetting and reckon on till sunset again. 
The Hebrews, also, began their Nvchthemeron (night-day) at sun- 
set and they divided it into twice twelve hours as we do, reckoning 
twelve for the day and twelve for the night ; so that their hours 
continually varying somewhat in length with the setting of the sun, 
the hours of the day, for one-half year, were longer than those of 
the night, and the contrary for the other ; from which circum- 
stance their hours are called temporary; those at the time of the 
equinoxes became equal because then those of the day and night 
are so. 

Iom in Irish signifies action, motion. From raidh, motion, 
comes comraidh to put in motion : Lan, full, iomlanadh, the action 
of filling, etc. " And God called the day Iom (the bustler, the 
time of action and labor), and the darkness he called lila ; and 
there was evening and there was morning on the first day." 
(Gen. 1:5). 

They began therefore, at evening to reckon the day and when we 
would express fourteen days we say a fortnight ; and the Irish 
expression for a fortnight, ceathar la deag, would rather than 
otherwise indicate that the la is the night. 

At midnight the Chinese begin to reckon the day, because they 
say the chaos was unfolded at that hour; and Hesiod calls Chaos, 
" the son of Erebus and Night." 

AS TO SOME OF THEIR GREATER CYCLES. 

Bar, a cycle; revolution, a month, whence Gion-bhar, January; 
Faoi-bhar, February. Hence Septem-ber, Octo-ber,etc. ; and this is 
probably the Hindu War, a day ; Chan-war, a revolution. Hindoo : 
Bar, the cyclic Isa, the moon ; Irish, Eas ; Hindoo, Bar, time, vicissi- 
tude ; barbaree, alternately. Chaldaic Bara, to renew, applied to 
the moon's revolution. The Hebrew word bar means to create; 
Bresheith Elim bara ha-shamain van ath haarets. — Gen. 1, 1. In 
this root, bar, in its sense of creation, is perceived English root, 
"bear. The Hebrew word means also to renew, form anew out of 
pre-existent substance. This meaning of the root must have given 
the Brahmins the idea that their God, Brahm, renewed the world at 



424 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

certain periods. They believe that when seventy Yugas are com- 
pleted Brahm not only annihilates the universe, but all angels, 
souls, celestial and infernal spirits. Then he remains in the same 
state he was before the creation ; but they say that after he has 
respired a while then he breathes again and creates everything anew, 
as well angels as souls and all other things, excepting spirits. Yet 
for all this after seventy Yuga more all is annihilated again. 

They who are acquainted with the day and night know that the 
day of Brahma is a thousand revolutions of the yugas and that his 
night extendeth for a thousand more. As on the coming of that day 
all things proceed from invisibility to visibility, so on the approach 
of that night they are all dissolved in that which is called invisible ; 
even the universe itself having existed is again dissolved, and now, 
again, on the approach of Brahma's day, it is, by the same over- 
ruling necessity, reproduced. 

Braham, the Great One, is the supreme, eternal and uncreated 
God ; Brahma, the first created being, by whom he made and gov- 
erns the world. Hence Mr. Maurice very properly derives these 
names from bar, to create, to renew; but with the Irish philoso- 
phers this word implied a cycle, a turn, as well as a renewal. 
Hence, in Irish, nua bhrieth, is the metempsychosis, or new crea- 
tion ; which is believed by some to be the Baal-berith of the 
Schechemites ( Judg. VIII. 33), the God of revolutions or cycles 
and not of purification, as Parkhurst* has it. Persic bar, a turn, 
time ; bar-Sal the revolution of a year, last year ; and the Japan- 
ese Fibarri, an almanak, is doubtless akin to bar. The Banians say 
that the world has been twice destroyed, by a deluge, by wind and 
by an earthquake and that it will soon be destroyed by fire. 

The Chaerman Nameh of the Persians relates that the Simorg 
Anka, or the Phoenix, being asked his age, replied : That this world 
is very ancient, for it has been seven times replenished with beings 
different from man and seven times depopulated. That the age of 
Adam or the human race, in which we now are, is to endure seven 
thousand years, making a great cycle. That himself had seen 
twelve of these revolutions and knew not how many more he had to 
see. 

As a symbol of the seven thousand years the world is to last the 
Japanese place their God Amida on a horse with seven heads. He 
is crowned with a golden circle of the Zodiac to indicate him as the 
God of cycles. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 425 

Even among ourselves there are many philosophers who believe 
in the renewals of the world periodically. 

From bar, to create, the Persians formed bare ; God, the crea- 
tor, and the Irish Bar-cheann, God the head or chief creator. 

The Irish bis,beis, baisc,baischarm, corresponds to Persic bazi, a 
sphere, piyaz, an onion, from its circular coatings ; chald,baz. Hebbis, 
an eggfrom its globular figure ; batsal, an onion ; Ch. Pisuk, a period ; 
azka, a ring; Arabic abiz, an age ; baus, an anniversary. Baise is 
found in many forms as in baesc, a circle, the ring or circumference 
of a wheel, etc., Barbhis, i.e., bar-bis, a cycle, an anniversary. 

In his book entitled «' The Wandering Stars," Scheik Schemfed- 
den Mohammed gives a description of the curiosities of Egypt 
through which country he traveled in the sixteenth century. 
" Among the curious monuments of Egypt," says he, "we must 
place the Berbis. At Dendera there is one in which there is a dome 
that has as many windows as there are days in the year ; each day 
the sun makes its entry by one of those windows and does not re- 
turn to it till the anniversary of that day in the following year." 

M. de Sacy after having classed Berbis among the words un- 
known to lexicographers, in his Mss. of the King of France's libra- 
ry says in a subsequent publication (Magaz. Encyclop. VI. Ann. 
Tom. VI.) " Macrizi having mentioned in few words the Berba of 
Semenout and that of Ikhmin, of this number is the Berba of Den- 
dera, which is a wonderful edifice. It has 180 windows ; each day 
the sun shines into one of them and the next day into another, un- 
til it comes to the last ; then it returns the contrary way to that it 
commenced. The Berba of Ikhmin is one of the greatest and most 
wonderful. The ancients constructed it for a depot of their treas- 
ure for they had a knowledge of the flood that was to deluge Egypt 
many ages before it happened. We there see figures of kings who 
governed Egypt. It is built of marble and has seven doors painted 
on the outside with azure and other colors and the painting is as 
fresh as if just done. The seven doors are named after the seven 
planets. On the walls are engravings of a multitude of figures of 
various forms and sizes ; they represent all the sciences of the 
Egyptians, viz., alchemy, chemistry, talismans, physic, astronomy 
and geometry, disposed under emblematic figures." 

When Abdollatiph speaks of the Berba it is from report only, of 
the vast buildings, the wonderful images, statues, inscriptions, but 
he says not a word about 365 or 180 windows ; and there is no doubt 



426 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

M. de Sacy's translation would benefit much by a revision. " Some 
think the Irish derived the word berbis from Egypt when they were 
in that country under the name of Aire-Coti, Shepherd-Princes.' ' 

Beacht is the cycle of twenty-eight years that the sun takes to go 
through the twelve signs. Persic bakht a cycle. 

Phennicshe, the Phoenix, a celestial cycle of the Irish, the great 
year of the Patriarchs in Josephus. The explanation given of it is 
as follows : " The Phoenix is a bird about the size of an eagle, and, 
when restored to life lives six hundred years ; and there is but one 
of the species in the world, and she makes her nest with combustible 
aromatics, and, when the sun sets them on fire, she fans the flame 
with her wings and burns herself, and out of the ashes arises a 
small maggot, which becomes another Phoenix. 

Co ' 

" One of the characters attributed to the great year," said 
Boulanger, " was the Phoenix, an apocalyptical dogma, enveloped 
in ^allegory, become by its fable unintelligible. Pluche derives the 
name from the Phoenician word Phanag, to be in delight and abund- 
ance ; but it is more rational to draw it from phanah, pronounced 
phanach, which signifies to return ; and this agrees better with the 
story of the Phoenix, which might be expressed by Ophen, a wheel, 
or rather by phonech, that which turns round." This is, indeed, 
sensible and correct. In Egyptian Pheneh is a cycle, period, age ; 
the Phoenician phen is cycle ; the Irish Phainic, a cycle, circle, ring ; 
also a raven, an eagle, or such birds as are imagined to fly in circles. 
Hence, in the eastern countries the raven was deemed sacred and 
of great request in the mythratic mysteries and among the Romans 
it was sacred to Apollo. 

Pliny says the Phoenix lived 340 years, others 640 and others 500. 
The Christian Fathers, Tertullian, Ambrose and others, in citing the 
eturn of the Phoenix, as a proof of the resurrection, app ear not to 
have considered that the Phoenix is but an astronomical cycle. 

Ph D= 80 
E = 5 



N 


:= 


: 50 


N 


:= 


50 


I 


■5= 


■ 10 


K 


i>= 


100 


SH 


w= 


:300 


E 


f\= 


5 



600 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME H. 427 

Mr. Maurice speaks of this cycle of 600 years as well as of that 
of 19 peculiar to the Chinese, as being known to the Brahmins. 
Cassini speaks in glowing eloquence of this cycle and says no inti- 
mation of it is to be found in the remaining monuments of any 
other nation except the ancient Hebrews. He says it is the finest 
period ever was discovered since ii, brings out the solar year more 
exactly than that of Hipparchus ; for in this period the sun and 
moon return to the same situation in the heavens, in which they 
were at the commencement of that cycle. Its possession and use 
by the ancient Irish might be thought to indicate the descent of 
that nation from the Chaldaean ; which doubtless is true, for, even in 
the Prediluvial ages, I find the Southern Persians dominating in 
Babylonia. Is not Chaldae but a slight variation of Celtai? The 
Egyptian name of the Phoenicians was Chal and Chaldae is the home 
of the Chal. 



Chaldaic. 


Ph 


£>= 


80 


E 


ri= 


5 


N 


:= 


50 


N 


j = 


50 


1 


s= 


1G 


K 


P- 


100 


SH 


ti/= 


300 


E 


ri= 


5 


Ch 


ri= 


8 



608 

Here we have added the character ch, which makes the same 
number as the Egyptian period Phre. This word is in effect two 
words, Phennik and Shech, which might be translated the Phoeni- 
cian sun or cycle; Sheth or Shech meaning the sun. 

Coptic and Egyptian. 
=500 
N = 50 
N = 50 



600 



428 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

This number corresponds to that which answers to the name Chal 
of the Phoenix, as according to Buxtorf : 

Chaldaic. 
C j final = 500 
A p =70 
L H =30 



600 

The Seosga or cycle of 60 years of the Irish was the same with 
that in use among the Chinese. Mr. Maurice thought it was the 
multiple of the Losca or cycle of five multiplied by twelve, the 
cycle of Jupiter, as he calls it, that makes the Sexagenary. 

Baisc — Bhuidhin or Naoidheachda, the nineteenth, the golden 
number, is the period of 19 years at the end of which the new moon 
comes in the same month and on the same day of the month. 

Fonn, a cycle; fonnsa, a hoop ; faine, a ring. This is, perhaps, 
the Tartar period of 180 years, named Van, mentioned by Mons. 
Bailey, in his letters to Voltaire (p. 213). 

Iom, Uim, Aim, a cycle, a period: iom — toinah called a year in 
Scripture was in early times called Yomim (i.e., the plural of Yom) 
davs. 

Aonach (pron. Enoch) Aineach, Eang, a period, cycle, year. 
Eang-la, an anniversay day. i( And all the days of Enoch were 365 
years" (Gen. V. 23). On the Apocryphal book of Enoch M. de 
Sacy says : " He speaks much concerning angels, of Uriel, of Ga- 
briel and of the others : he discourses of the divisions of the days 
and of the times " (du Livre d'Enoch, par De Sacy, p. 14). To 
Enoch the Jewish authors ascribe the discovery of the twelve signs. 
Hindu Hangam, a year. 

Horapoilo informs us that the Egyptians marked the one-fourth of 
an acre of ground to denote a year in their hieroglyphics. The Irish 
word Eang, a year, with the prefix t, making teang, denotes a quar- 
ter of an acre of land. 

Teachbhaidk, teachfhaidt, teachphai, the solstice, Chaldaic Tacu- 
pha, a revolution, a circle, solstice, equinox. Hebtekuphath, a 
revolution of the year: Old Ir. tachamh-sir, a month, a revolution 
of Sir or Seir, Chald. Sichar; Arab Sahur, the moon. 

Gall, a wheel, circle, cycle, Sior-gal, a complete revolution, 
Saoghal, revolution, an orb, life, age, the world. Hence the Latin 
Saeculum. Gall is the word for a cock in Irish as in Latin (Gallus), 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 429 

that bird being the observer of the revolution of the day. Noir- 
gall or Nair-gall, the cock of Aurora, from noir, near the East, Au- 
rora. Eire aros a neargal ; " let the husbandman rise at cock- 
crowing, " i. e., with Aurora (O'Clery). Aros, a husbandman from 
ar ploughing, husbandry. The Cuthites worshiped the cock of 
Aurora, as a revolutionary bird. " And the men of Cuth made 
Nergal." And, " the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth," Ir. 
Cearc-ein, the hen and chickens, i.e., the Pleiades ; " and the men 
ofHamathmade Ashima,the Sun." (II. Kings, XVII. 30.) Among 
the Persians planetary worship very early prevailed. 

Chuig, Chuiggeal, Oig, a period, cycle, Cuig-bhreith, an annual 
sacrifice. Cuig-maddin and Oig-maddin, Aurora, i.e., the return of 
the Sun in the East, Chald. Chong-madinna, a cycle or festal day, 
anniversary. Chald. chagal, a circle, a globe. Chuig is supposed 
to be the same with the Sanscrit yoog, yuga, a period, cycle, con- 
junction of planets ; age yugut, world, universe. Kaliyuga, would, 
doubtless, refer to some Chaldaic cycle, say the Phennic of 600 
years. 

Rath, a cycle, circle, wheel, Raith, a portion of a circle, a quarter 
of a year. Brath or bragh, i.e., be-rath, forever, cycles innumer- 
able. 

Nidhe, time, period ; Ar. Neda, time, period. An, Ana, Aine, 
Uine, Onn, plural Anith. Bel-ain, the cycle of Bel, the Sun, a 
year. Ain-leog, a swallow, a revolutionary bird. Uin-tas, a wind- 
lass, i.e., the slow revolver. Uain da bliaghana, the space of two 
years. Gri-an, the Sun, the scorching planet. 

Lu-an, the small planet or revolutioner, Onn, as applied to the 
cycle of the Sun, signifies the Sun, fire. Cohen On, the priest of 
On or of the Sun; Ar. and Pers., an, anu, ayine, seasons, revolu- 
tions, Chald., aim, time; annan, time to observe, whence the Ir. 
Anius, an astronomer, astrologer, and Ana-mor, the Zodiac, the 
great circle. " The temples, named Ana-mor, contain forty-eight 
stones, the number of the old constellations, with a kebla of nine 
stones, placed near the circumference, to represent Budh, the Sun ? 
in its progress through the signs. Such is that at Ana-mor in the 
county of Fermanagh.' ' This indicates the Buddhist worship to 
have been prevalent among the ancient Irish, as is the opinion of 
learned investigators, such asCormac, archbishop of Cashei, of the 
author of the round towers, etc. 

The kebla consisted of nine stones to represent, as is said, the 



430 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

ninth avatura or descent of Budh, the Sun-born, who was the ninth 
avatura of Vaiaswata, or the Sun-born of the Brahmins. So, 
Veeshnoosa (Vishnu) is said to have made his ninth appearance 
under the name of Budha (Kaempfer, Hist, of Japan). According 
to Sir Wm, Jones the three first avatars or descents of Vishnu re- 
lated to the universal deluge. Three was a sacred number in mem- 
ory of the three sons of Noah (Faber Cabiri). Hence, with the 
Brahmins and ancient Irish 3 and 9 were sacred numbers. Every 
altar in Ireland was supported by three uprights? The sacred 
conque must have nine volutes with the Brahmins, etc.? The 
Ceylonese reckon from the last avatura of Budh. 

Lu-an, the moon, from whence the Latin Luna, is evidently a 
Chaldaean word, signifying the an or planet of ^ equals 30 ; but 
luan also signifies the smaller planet. 

It is said there is a mountain called Crishna-Ain, the Circle of 
Creeshna, in the county of Kerry, where the remains of an altar 
still exist. 

In Joshua xix, 38, the Canaanitish temple of Beth-Anath is con- 
nected in narrative with Beth-Shemesh, the house of the sun. 

Saoba, a cycle; Seona Saobha, the cycle of Saturn (Sanscrit 
Sani, the planet Saturn). Saobhal, Siobhal, a cycle; Siobhal na 
greine, the sun's path, the zodiac. 

In explanation here they say " they divide the year into twelve 
parts, according to the twelve signs of the sun ; and the month 
according to the path (sibal) of the sun in each sign. Chald. Sebil, 
a way, path, suggests that we are here come to the meaning of the 
Sybils, which is supported by the fact of the most celebrated of the 
Roman Sybils being spoken of as beloved of Apollo (the sun) and 
as having lived a thousand years. Pausanias speaks of a Sybil of 
Phoenicia, whom he calls Saba, whence Boulanger concludes that 
Sybil is only a cycle or period personified, and that it is a period of 
a thousand years, as Ovid gives it an existence of that duration. 
Hence the Irish siobal, an onion, because, when cut transversely, 
its coats and rings represent the heavenly spheres. The Egyptians 
and Brahmins are said to have had a veneration for the onion and 
the Chaldaeans long before either, according to Alexander. 
(Maurice, Ind. Ant. vol. III.) 

10. Cuaran, Curuinne, Cruine, a cycle, sphere, globe, an onion, 
Arab, Kurn, an age ; Krun, a sphere ; chad caran. 

Casar, a period, cycle, return. Crios, a cycle, the sun ; Grian- 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 431 

Crios or Crios-bacht, the circle of the sun, the zodiac. The word 
Crios or Cris may have been originally spelled Cres or Kres : — 

Chald. 
K p = 100 
R i = 200 
E ri = 5 

S b = 60 



385 

Krishna would be either a diminutive of this or with a repetition 
of the same idea in the affixed an. 

Ear, Earrach, Eiris, iris, Uiris, a cycle, an epoch. Ear-Chal is 
doubtless, the make up of the name Hercules as applied to the sun 
or the zodiac. Chaldaic Rochal means a merchant, negotiator, and 
the Ha-rochal, the negotiator; and the Heb. Rachel is a sheep, 
forms which, perhaps, would be all allied to the name Hercules. 
" Yarab," says Costard, " signifies in Hebrew a month, a moon; 
which seems to intimate as if the oldest measure of time, taken from 
the revolution of the heavenly bodies, was a month. " But both in 
the Sanscrit and Irish, those two very ancient languages, we find 
Cris and Crios signifying a cycle and the sun, whence we conclude 
they measured time by both sun and moon and early attained to a 
knowledge of the length of the year. 

Duir, dra, drach, draoch, a wheel, circle, cycle, period. Duir- 
teach, a round cell of a draoi (Drwee, Druid, Magus), a round 
tower, temple, church. 

Graibh, an Ephemeris Almanac. Ghan, aghan, a cycle, period. 
Nuige, a period. Ease, a cycle, the cyclic moon. The six seasons 
in which God created the world the Persians name Cahan or Gha- 
han barba. These seasons they did not represent as following con- 
nectedly upon each other. According to de' Herbelot they placed 
them in different parts of the year and made them each of five days 
work, which would make the calender month. 

Ainbhih, pronunced Ainwy, though applied to the rainy season, 
signifies literally a knowledge of the stars. Arabic ambra, stars, 
skilled in the knowledge of the stars, Sale (in Alcoran, Prelim 
Disc.) explains the word as follows : " Anwa signifies the mansions 
of the moon. The Arabs observed what change happened in the 
air at the rising and setting of the signs through which the moon 
passes every night and at length came to ascribe divine power to the 
signs, saying that the rain was from such and such an anwa. 



432 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

The foregoing scientific terms show how close of kin the ancient 
Irish language was to the Chaldaean, Arabic, Hindu and Scythian 
or Tartaric languages. The descent of that people appears, on the 
whole, fairly indicated in their history. 

Among the tribe names connected with their history, is Tuatha 
Dedanan, which is Chaldaean. Mr. Davies in his Celtic Researches 
(London, 1804) finds that "the Irish or a congenial dialect once 
prevailed in Thrace and was diffused from thence all the way to the 
islands of Britain, whilst, at the same time, it branched off to the 
Italian side of the Alps. Part of the famliy must have reached 
their destination by land. A fact, which, I apprehend, has irresist- 
able force is the identity of the Irish and Waldensic languages. 
The latter is in use among those who inhabit a few Alpine valleys.' ' 

As to the Waldensic and the Irish being the same language there 
will remain no doubt in the mind after an inspection is made of the 
subjoined three columns in which the Lord's prayer is given in 
Waldensic, Irish and Latin. 



HIBEKNICE. 

1. Ar n'Athair ata air 
neamh. 

2. Beannaichear t'ainim. 



WALDENSIC. 

1. Our n'Arme * ata air 
neambh. 

2. Beanich a tanim. 



3. Gottigea do rioghaeda. 3. Gu diga do riogda. 



4. Go deantor do thoill 
air talamh mar do nith- 
ear air neamh. 

5. Ar naran laethmhuil 
tabhair dhuim an iugh. 

6. Agus maith dhuim ar 
bhfhiaca mur mhaith 
mid dar bhfheichcam- 
nuibh fein. 

7. Agus na leig shinn 
ambuaidhrebh. 

8. Acht saorshinn o olc. 

9. Oir is fhleatsa rioghta 
cumhacta agus gloir go 
Siorraidhe. 



4. Gu denta du hoill air 
talmhuin, mar ta ar 
neamh. 

5. Tabhar dhim an iugh ar 
naran limbhail. 

6. Agus mai dhuine ar 
fiach amhail mear marb- 
hid or flacha. 

7. Na leig sin ambharibh # 

8. Ach saorsa shin on olc. 

9. Or fhletsa rioghta, 
comhta, agus gloir gu 
sibhiri. 



LATIN. 

1. Pater noster caelestis. 

2. Sancte tuum colatur 
nomen. 

3. Regnum tuum institua- 
tur. 

4. Voluntati patiatur tuae, 
quemadmodum in caelo, 
sic etiam in terris. 

5. Hodiernum in diem id- 
one um nobis victum lar- 
gitur. 

6. Et remitte nobis debita 
nostra,prout nos quoque 
debitoribus nostris re- 
mitimus. 

7. Neve peccandi nobis 
occasiones proponas. 

8. Nos autem a male vin- 
dices. 

9. Quippe tuum est reg- 
num ac potentia ac glo- 
ria in sempiternum. 



* Arme and Athair are here equivalent terms in the Irish. The above representation of the 
Lord's Prayer in those three languages is from the work of Chamberlain, entitled " the 
Oratio Dominica in the different languages of almost all nations," published at Amsterdam in 
1715. 



APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 433 

It has been the understanding of some learned investigators that 
the Waldensic language arose from the remains of the army of 
Dathi son of Fiachra, King of Erin, first cousin of Nial the Great, 
who, when the latter monarch got killed in war on the continent, 
succeeded him and led an army into the center of Europe. This 
King Dathi having got killed by lightning, as the history says, 
among the Alps, it is supposed his army conquered a home for them- 
selves in the valleys of those mountains and that the Waldenses are 
their descendants. There appears, however, no doubt that Mr. 
Davies' account is correct and that the Waldenses (Ghsedhal-duin> 
Gaelic people) are part of those people who came overland from 
the East and settled in Thrace, of whom was the family of Philip 
of Macedon (Gaelic Mac Ethach or Mac Eduin) and also in the val- 
leys of Piedmont. The Kingdom of Macedon, in Thrace, of 
which Alexander, the son of Philip, was the 17th King of his line, 
was founded, according to Rollin (IV., 270), in the year 794 B. C. 
Sethes or Seuthes, prince of Thrace, into whose service the Greeks 
entered on their retreat from Asia under Xenophon, was, perhaps, 
great-grandfather of Alexander the Great, or brother of his grand- 
father? Alexander may have been called after him, since Seth or 
Sethar is a Gaelic form for Alexander, which perhaps, was the 
real form of name of the latter? 



28 



COSMO-THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSES. 



" THE STUDY OF HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY ;" 
BEING A LECTURE DELIVERED BY THE AUTHOR, ON ONE 
OR TWO OCCASIONS IN KANSAS, IN 1888 ; WITH FOUR 
BRIEF DISCOURSES ADDITIONAL PERTAINING 
TO THEOLOGY ; BEING SUPPLEMENTARY TO 
THE TREATISE ON "PROPHECIES OF 
REVELATION AND DANIEL DEVEL- 
OPED IN THE HISTORY OF 
CHRISTENDOM." 



BY 

EOBEET SHAW, M. A., 

AUTHOK OF " CREATOR AND COSMOS," ETC., ETC. 



I. On The Study of History in Connection with Prophecy. 

II. On Providence and Predestination. 

III. On Heaven, Hell and the Judgment. 

IV. On The Cross of Christ. 
V. On The Future Life. 



REVISED. 



ST. LOUIS: 
BECKTOLD & COMPANY. 

1889. 



The Importance of the Study of History in Connection 

With Prophecy. 

We who are here present have lived in a transition age, our own 
generation having been occupied in passing from an old state of 
things to anew. We have now completely overstepped the thresh- 
old of a new era. If our grandfathers were now resurrected from 
the dead and placed among us again in life and intelligence they 
would doubtless be no little surprised at the state of things in 
which they would find themselves, a state of things so variously 
different from what they had been accustomed to in their former 
terrestrial existence. Whether or not those speak correctly who 
say the spirits of deceased ancestors continually watch over their 
descendants I may remark that in the revolutions of the ages, in 
the epochs which characterize the great precessional cycle, some 
such changes have place in the history of man as might appear to 
be cyclical. We hav r e, in due order, the alternations of day and 
night, the seasons and the precessional epochs. So, analogously, 
the changes in human history. Although people generally observe 
with admiration the precision — far more exact than clock-work — 
with which occur those changes in nature called, for example, the 
day and night and the seasons, yet most people seem to think that 
within this cosmical order, so remarkable withal, the history of man 
runneth at random, being left to take care of itself as if subject to 
no controlling influence or law. 

Investigation, however, appears to prove what the experience of 
the wise in all the historic ages concluded there was good ground 
for supposing, namely, that a certain law underlies the history of 
man, or a certain controlling will by which the events of human 
history come about in some such definite order as theologians 
might be thought to indicate in the expression, " the fulfillment of 
prophecy in history." In this way prophecy might be called his- 
tory in the germ. Prophecy expressed is the apparent seed. His- 
tory developed is the full-grown tree of prophecy in all its ramifi- 
cation and foliage. From what a small seed springs the large tree ! 
From what a brief prophetic reference, symbolically set forth, 
springs the ages and volumes of human history! The same intel- 
ligent power, which gives birth to and developes the tree, is the 
power of prophecy, which originates and developes human history. 

(437) 



438 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

That intelligence knoweth the beginning, the progress and the issue 
of all things. 

But, as I have said before, the results of investigation coincide 
with the experience of the wise in all ages that human history 
cometh about in a way, which may be called cyclical ; and the 
doctrines of the founder of Christianity, properly understood, go 
to prove that within such apparent necessity man is a free agent. 
The old Greek philosopher, who wrote the book upon the subject 
" Man a Microcosm," was not unintelligent. According to this 
definition man is a little cosmos, a cosmos in miniature. This defi- 
aition is correct in its way ; but a man is not so diminutive a cos- 
mos as is a microscopic animalcule nor so great a cosmos as man 
aggregated or confederated into a body politic. The fundamental 
dea in the word cosmos is order; a secondary meaning is beauty, 
which, mainly, is understood to arise from sj'inmetry and propor- 
;ion of parts in an object or organism. The common meaning 
^iven in our age to the word cosmos is the world, the universe 
being always in perfect order as to its principal phenomena of day 
and night, the seasons and the other phenomena that occur cyclically. 

But man, being a free agent within certain limits, within a cos- 
mical order, which underlies and is the foundation of his existence, 
has the power as well as privilege of living either well or ill, of 
being either a good or a bad person. The living well, the living a 
life of active godliness, which is that of true manliness, implies self- 
denial; for, man has, to a great extent, to deny himself as well 
as deny the world in his progress towards the accomplishment of 
good objects. He has also the power as a body corporate of in- 
augurating a good or a bad system of government, or of, betimes, 
introducing bad laws into an originally good governing code. How 
many laws there do appear upon the statute books of every organ- 
ized state of the world to-day, laws that should not there appear, 
or, if they did, it should be with modification by explanation, con- 
traction, pruning, or the like. But in order that men appointed 
as legislators have the ability to prepare and enact just and proper 
laws, it is necessary that they be well versed in history, which 
teaches them what course to pursue, and what to avoid in the con- 
duct of life, and in the preparation, enactment and execution of 
laws. 

Aristotle was a man well versed in the constitutions, laws and 
histories of the various Grecian republics. It is after we have 
read his Nichomachian Ethics, that we may apply ourselves with 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 439 

the greater profit to his Politics and Economics. The conclusion 
which a thorough study of his works enables us to arrive at con- 
cerning him as a man of genius and many sided ability is, as of a 
man of the highest order, and in this respect the conclusion is 
somewhat different than that at which we arrive concerning the 
bearing or tendency of his Ethical and Political systems. As a 
profound and careful thinker and consummate philosopher we find 
none of his successors or of our contemporaries to surpass Aristotle 
in manysided ability to bring to bear in illustration of his subjects 
and in proof of his positions his remarkably varied stores of learn- 
ing. For many things put forth in the systems of Ethics and 
Politics which he advocated, we have neither use nor place. For 
his class institution of slavery we have as little use or place as for 
his class institution of monarchy, and just as little for his adhesion 
to the opinion prevalent in his day (in opposition to the more cor- 
rect opinion of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras expressed before his 
time) of there being no Antipodes. The formers of the codes of 
Diocletian, of Constantine and of Justinian; of Charlmagne, of 
Alfred and of Napoleon, in the aftertimes, were all students of 
Aristotle, were imbued with some of his spirit and adopted some 
of his doctrines. 

When first I entered upon my collegiate course Locke's theory 
of ideas held the boards in our highest educational institutions ; 
but by and by came on Victor Cousin's Analysis of Locke's theory, 
and behold the latter, so long celebrated work, vanishes from the 
educational institutions and is no longer found therein as a text- 
book. 

With the publication of Cousin's Analysis of Locke's theory of 
Ideas human thought had decidedly advanced in the proper direction. 
Society, like a man with a blind-man's buff over his eyes, which 
is there with his own consent, long held on to the coat tails of 
Locke's theory of ideas; but in Victor Cousin's Analysis society 
thinks more rationally and independently concerning this very im- 
portant and interesting subject, becomes more intelligently positive 
in its assertion that the mind cannot act or rather perceive whore 
it is not present; that language is true to itself if the literal mean- 
ings be given to the roots; that the same language will be found 
true to itself in its progressive stages or ages and all Languages 
true to each other when the root meanings are given. By this ad- 
vance society became, on the whole, more intelligently self- 
determinative. Locke's theory of ideas is, however, reasonably 



440 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

decided to have been an improvement upon the systems which had 
preceded it for many centuries. The Ecclesiastical schoolmen had 
effected remarkable mystifications in the philosophical, moral and 
cosmical systems. 

Not only the Old Testament but the New is found to be consistent 
with itself, when the proper interpretation is given to the parts re- 
spectively, according to the nature of the language in which each 
component part is set forth. But the second century somewhat 
mystified the Gospel's Christianity of the first, the third percepti- 
bly that of the second, and so they proceeded with their refinements 
in mystification. In the fourth century Constantine embraced 
Christianity, substituted it as the State religion instead of the old 
medley of Polytheism of the republic and empire ; removed his seat 
or government from Rome to Byzantium, which old city he re- 
builded on a much enlarged scale and magnificently adorned. This 
city he now constituted his capital of the empire under the name of 
New Rome, but after his time it was called in honor of bim Constanti- 
nople. Here he instituted a code of laws, effected the unification of 
the state and church, which afterhis time culminated in one of the 
most oppressive systems of government of which we have knowl- 
edge in history. How different this system of government insti- 
tuted by Diocletian and perfected by Constantine and his immediate 
successors from the old system of the Roman republic ; how differ- 
ent the system of religion inaugurated by Constantine and his suc- 
cessors from that of the Gospel of Christ ! Constantine the first, the 
the son of Constantius Chlorus, has the reputation, as you are 
aware, of having been the first Christian emperor and a passing 
strange exponent of Christianity he was? The government of the 
people of the old Roman republic was substituted for by a govern- 
ment of class, headed by monarchy. The simple system of Gospel 
Christianity, which is founded on fraternal love and active godli- 
ness, was substituted for by the coldness, arrogance and exclusive- 
ness of class. It is true that the old system of the Roman republic 
may be considered as subverted from the time that Csesar crossed 
the Rubicon in his pursuit of Pompey ; but it is aptly remarked by 
Gibbon and other historians that Diocletian introduced into the 
courts of the emperors the court ceremonial of the oriental despots. 
Before him the manner of life of the Roman emperors was wont, 
for the most part, to be comparatively simple and democratic ; but 
after Diocletian each emperor would seem to have improved upon 
the barbaric splendor, ostentation and arrogance of his predecessors 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 441 

while claiming to be, in his person, the head of the churcn and the 
representative of Christ on earth. Under the assumed name of 
Christ, therefore, great cruelties began early to be practiced. Thus 
was introduced the reign of Antichrist, which means literally 
" against Christ," but came to mean a regime carried out under the 
name of Christ, but acting diametrically in opposition to his teach- 
ings and character. Unlike the simple leaders of democracy who 
are so ready to speak to every one either for a vote or through good 
nature, but more unlike Christ himself, the prime representative of 
the equal rights of all men, the so-called Christian emperors were 
either unapproachable by the masses of the people or approachable 
by them only with great hesitation and fear. 

The setting up of the empire instead of the republic, was, how- 
ever, only the beginning of sorrows for the people ; an augmenta- 
tion of those sorrows was the unification of the state with the 
church in the government. Then and after that it was that the 
governmental geniuses, ecclesiastical and secular, were exercised in 
the invention and enaction of cruel laws, which to a great extent 
prevented the masses of the people not only from acting and investi- 
gating but from thinking. As the middle ages passed along there 
was inaugurated and came into action that well known institution, 
styled by a monstrous abuse of language, " the Holy Office of the 
Inquisition," but which was one of the most atrociously cruel and 
murderous institutions that ever existed on the earth. The eccle- 
siastico-civil authorities had so refined upon and mystified the doc. 
trines of the gospel that these doctrines became incomprehensible 
to the common mind. They then proceeded to cruelly torture and 
burn at the stake men and women because they could not conscien- 
tiously profess to believe what they could not understand or what 
their minds conceived differently from the explanation given in the 
ecclesiastico-governmental authorities. This state of things went 
on for hundreds of years in succession until vast multitudes of per- 
sons, male and female, had suffered tortures and deaths of the 
most cruel kinds on account of what they believed to be the true 
meaning of the Gospel of Christ. 

As we advance from the " Middle Ages " towards the time of 
'* the Reformation' the Crusades arose, expeditions of armies ar- 
rayed under the name of Christ, whose professed business it was 
to slay the Turks and possess themselves of Palestine. For nearly 
two centuries these expeditions continued to rage and roll along 
until countless numbers were slain on both sides, Christians and 
Infidels so called. 



442 



CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 



It is true that these expeditions, though productive of great suf- 
fering and loss of life and treasure, were not entirely unproductive 
of good effects. They energized Europe from a lethargy into 
which it had been more or less sunk ; and tended to retard for some 
centuries the progress of the Turk westward. But whoever in- 
quires where it is to be found that Christ ever by word or deed 
authorized any one to go and do violence to another will see 
how entirely different was the spirit that prompted the crusades 
from that of the founder of Christianity. The spirit of class and 
of monarchy had suppressed or crushed the spirit of thought. Any 
course or system adopted by the ecclesiastico-civil authorities was 
sure to be followed blindly by the unthinking masses, and those 
who perceived harm in their systems or courses and opened their 
mouths against them were sure to be stigmatized as bad citizens. 

But even the few references, so far given, will show the impor- 
tance of the study of history in unmistakingly indicating what 
courses should be followed, while their opposites should be avoided 
in life and legislation; and will, to some extent, indicate the natural 
bent of the human mind for the acquisition of power and for the 
exercise of this power too often in a malicious and wantonly cruel 
way to the great detriment of the people. 

We have the experience of one century of the working of this 
government, a system of government, in its inception, the most 
equitable of all which history records. So far it has, on the whole, 
worked admirably well and effected much for the amelioration of 
the condition and the civilization of mankind, even far beyond the 
bounds of its own jurisdiction. Under its name and authority 
many things have been done which should not have been done, as 
under the name of Christianity many things have been done which 
should not have been done. But, speaking analogically, although 
having already accomplished more than the work of a full grown 
man, our republic is, as to age, yet in its infancy. Let us begin 
to estimate what progress it may yet make within the second cen- 
tury of its national existence. Then what in century third? in 
century fourth ? in century h'f th ; in century sixth ? in century sev- 
enth? Here have we, perhaps, gone too far in speaking of a re- 
public at the end of a week of centuries from the beginning of the 
republic's existence? Hardly too far, we think, for then, doubt- 
less, the government of this country will bear to be called a republic 
although of a more inflexible character than it is now. In that 
age the machinery of the government will be much more compli- 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PEOPHECY. 443 

cated and its work to be done vastly more than at present ; but if 
our republican civilization shall have done its duty during that 
week of centuries it will have accomplished a vast work for the 
civilization of mankind. After century seventh will our republi- 
can government go on acquiring more of the iron in its already 
inflexible composition, until say by century tenth, it may, through 
external force (oh would that the men of our county might not then 
be women in spirit), or for policy sake (a shallow policy, indeed !) 
have recognized one religious sect of that age more than any other 
and have become in effect a state and church combination of govern- 
ment? Will that government be of foreign composition and air 
and will our people of that age have become so devoid of self- 
respect as to pay attention to externals in the religion then set up 
as national — to hoods and capes and cloaks and outward show of 
sacerdotal paraphernalia, which some even of the present age at- 
tend upon, but the vast majority decide should be elevated imme- 
diately to sublimation by the igneous process, if not put to better 
use? How much need there is that education shall continue to be 
promoted in all the States ! and that such modest self-respect and 
self-reliance should be encouraged as leads our people to think and 
reason independently and to self-determinateiiess of character as 
to conduct and action. After class system has been once introduced 
freedom and independence of thought fast die out in the masses of 
the people. The upper classes, so called, are then supposed to be 
the repositories of all knowledge and the people generally to know 
little or nothing. 

But, in our OAvn age and country it is observable that multitudes 
of the people are impulsive and fast to act, which, doubtless, 
arises to them partially at least, from their neglect of the study of 
history. Of the three steps of the syllogism, the major premise 
the minor premise and the conclusion, they very often, in their 
reasonings neglect the middle step altogether and pass directly 
from the major premise to the conclusion. For example, I hear 
one remark: " The Democrats will vote for Cleveland and Thur- 
man; therefore, John will vote for Cleveland and Thurman," the 
minor premise not being here expressed but implied namely: 
" John is a Democrat." " Nor when such reasoners find themselves 
" suspended upon one of the horns of a dilemma" are they ac- 
customed to permit themselves long to remain in such position, but 
quickly find a way of extricating themselves whether or not by a 
correct and logical process. Our people, male and female, are 



444 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

generally not only fast, but expert in talk, especially concerning 
the ordinary topics of the day. It is good to be able to say and 
say well, on each proper occasion for speaking, what a person may 
have to say and nothing less nor more than enough. But there is a 
habit prevailing in many people of talking too much. Self- 
restraint in talking as well as in the exercises of the passions, is 
absolutely necessary to propriety in youth, maturity and old age. 
But the impulsiveness and quickness to act of large multitudes of our 
people, a person would think, might at some time tend to endanger 
the stability of the government or have a tendency to introduce 
many unnecessary if not unrighteous laws into the different State 
codes and that of the nation. This inconsiderateness and impul- 
siveness in political partizanship may frequently have the effect of 
placing in the State or national legislatures men who are unfit for 
such positions, and who having got there, are by virtue of such 
positions the makers of the laws for the government of the good 
living and intelligent masses of the people. 

A study of the histories of the Greek commonwealths will teach 
us to guard against such State pride as may become displayed in 
angry rivalry of one State with another or with the confederation. 
Witness the rivalries and contentions of the Athenians with the 
Lacedemonians, for example, and of either or both of these with 
the minor States of Greece, which in later times weakened the 
Grecian arm in its operations against the Persians and finally left 
all Greece subject to Philip of Macedon. The great historians of 
the Roman Republic, down at least to the Antonines, may be 
studied by us with much profit. We can follow that history as 
contained in the diffuse and MacCauly-like style of Livy; in the 
beautiful concise style of Tacitus, and in the peculiar historical 
style of Pliny, the younger. In those immortal historic works we 
see that mighty Roman nation exhibiting itself as a republic, and, 
as far as we now go down in it, as a very mild sort of empire. In 
the republic we observe great Rome not only subjugating the Ital- 
ian States, but finally, after very long and bloody wars, the empire 
of Carthage and ail of the world included between the Euphrates 
and the Grampians, between the Rhine and the Atlantic. These, 
be it remembered, were the doings of the Roman republic, for little 
if anything was achieved by conquest beyond these borders by 
Rome, become an Empire. From the time Julius Caesar became 
sole dictator, down to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus there appear as 
emperors a few notorious tyrants, of whom the names of Nero and 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 445 

Domitian will go down to everlasting infamy; but these were only 
exceptions ; for the rulers generally for this period were far from 
being entirely undemocratic in their life and manners and some of 
them accomplished important and imperishable work in literature, 
science and civilization. The names of the Antonines as that of 
Augustus shall descend with praise to all time. 

In the rebellion or secession of Cataline are depicted the dangers 
to which a republic may be subject by a designing and inordinately 
desiring and aspiring few. It would appear that a few fires maybe 
at any time ready to burst out and burn with all the fury possible 
to them. Hence is perceived the danger to which a republic may 
be liable from what is called State or individual pride. I am not 
here insinuating a word against the practice or propriety of States 
recognizing some " favorite sons ' whose integrity and useful in- 
dustry has been long conspicuous on the bench, in the legislature 
or elsewhere; but the general confederation must be eternally vig- 
ilant and, in all sobriety, carefully guard against the assumption of 
too great a show of self-importance or self-aggrandizement by any 
one State or person in the confederation. Politically all sections 
of the country should be kept on a level, no disposition towards 
sectional or personal political aggrandizement of any one section 
or person over all the rest being favored. The government of the 
republic de facto, or in office, should know only the country as a 
whole, there being in its mind neither party lines nor sectional 
prejudices, no matter by which party it has been elected to office. 
To the executive of the nation, therefore, there is properly no 
northern or southern, no eastern or western section, only the repub- 
lic, as a whole, one and inseparable. When any disturbance should 
from any cause arise in any one section of the republic the con- 
federation (I do not mean in this case the executive) should take 
care to preserve an equipoise so that the disturbance may not be 
allowed to spread or to become general, and this too without any 
interference on the part of the national executive being necessi- 
tated. The whole of the republic should exercise a loving, fraternal 
care over each of the parts, by coolness and moderation preserving 
an equal balance and allowing an equal and righteous distribution 
of the offices of government to be given to each section of the 
country without complaint, regarding it as a matter of right and 
justice that the administration of the public offices should fall to 
those places and persons to whom by right they belong. 

Our position, historically speaking, in the latter part of this 19th 



446 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

century, is as it were on the summit of a lofty hill, whence we can 
in our extended survey of the past ages observe in succession the 
rise and nourish and decay of nations and languages. As history is 
found to repeat itself, at least to a remarkable degree, then (unless 
the events likely to occur may be in some degree counteracted or 
prevented), by a close observation and study of the past history we 
can, doubtless, attain to an approximate knowledge of what is most 
likely to take place in the future and so may learn what is neces- 
sary to be avoided and what to be followed in life and legislation. 
Nations last longer than individual men, but they, as well as the 
languages they use, have an end in time and are supplanted 
by others. As the ages pass along historians record what they re- 
gard as the most remarkable facts and transactions of their nations 
individually and in their interrelations with other nations. Philos- 
ophers of the various classes record their systems of ideas. Plato, for 
example, is, as far as we know, the best exponent of the intelligence 
of Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ. Plu- 
tarch, in his " Morals," would be a fair exponent of the intelli- 
gence of both Greece and Rome in the first century of Christianity, 
besides being, to some extent, a fair commentary on Plato's Philoso- 
phy. This last-named author (I mean Plutarch) had the advantage 
of the study of the authors of the four centuries intervening between 
himself and that celebrated disciple of Socrates. But we nave not 
only them and Plutarch, but all who have come after the latter to 
our own time for our study, contemplation and advantage. 

If before Plato and Herodotus I follow the chronological 
thread of the ancient Egyptian history I have eighteen cen- 
turies at least of comparative clearness in which I can trace 
from the throne of the Shepherd kings, so called, of the race 
of Menes, which are found 38 in succession in the historical 
list of Eratosthenes, the principal dominating races with their 
peculiar civilizations of Western Asia and of Europe. This 
may seem a startling announcement, but it w T ill not appear so 
wonderful when it is discovered that the race spoken of as of the 
Nile's Valley are descended to thence from the valleys of the 
Euphrates and the Tigris, and from eastward and northward of the 
latter, and that people of the same stock as those who gave that 
awful magnificence to Thebes and Memphis and to 2,000 miles of 
the Nile's Valley, had founded Nineveh and Babylon and were the 
originators of the peculiar civilization found in the valleys of the 
Euphrates and the Tigris, and farther north in those of the Oxus 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 447 

and Jaxartes; that they were, in short, of the Indo-European 
stock. Going farther north still (for we are aware that climates 
change very remarkably in the course of time), we find the root of 
the name Eber, which is identical anciently with the root of the 
name Abraham and of the word Arab, in the root Siber, the root 
of the name Siberia, which may point to the conclusion that those 
peoples had inhabited the regions farther north before they occu- 
pied the hills of Kurdistan whence they descended into the valleys 
of the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile. 

Having descended from the steppes of high Asia and taken to 
the avocation of shepherds they occupied the valleys along the 
streams, where their flocks and herds obtained provender and water 
enough. This is the race, whose origin is spoken of in the 2nd 
chapter of Genesis under the name of Adam or Edom, which then 
occupied the garden of Eden ; wherein you can identify the rivers 
spoken of as flowing through that garden, the Hiclclekel as the 
Tigris ; the Gihon as the Araxes ; the Pison as the Yoruk, and, fourth 
the Euphrates. By this we find the river which divided into four 
"heads" or sources to have been really the water shed of the 
mountains of Armenia or Caucasus, which drained off in four 
different channels one towards the north-east into the Caspian, one 
towards the north-west into the Euxine and two towards the south- 
east, which united in one before they reached the Persian Gulf, 
their debouchure. These rivers enable us very easily to locate the 
garden of Eden, geographically considered. It is, speaking geo- 
graphically, comprehended in the territory lying between the Euxine 
and the Caspian seas and a line drawn parallel to the northern shore 
of the Persian Gulf to some indefinite distance towards the east and 
west. It would, doubtless, fall between 30° and 42° of north latitude 
and 34° and 54° east longitude. The original says that the Gihon 
or Araxes encompasses the whole land of Cush, i. e., Caesh or 
Caeth, which is translated Ethiopia. Now this is all true, as accord- 
ing to the present territorial names even, for Caucasus is Caeth- 
Caes-us, and Ethiopia, with its parts transposed is Japheth-ia. 
Hence you see the origin of the P^thiopians or Cushites of the Nile's 
valley and that the original Ethiopia or Cush was in Asia. Aeth is 
Caeth or Cuth and Aes is Caes or Cush and so Aesia or Cusia is the 
same originally with Ethiopia or Japhethia. The 2nd chapter 
of Genesis indicates the home of the ancestors of our race at 
the time referred to. In Sanchuniatho's theological history of the 
Phoenicians we find indications which lead us to suppose that 



448 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

before this race took to the pastoral way of life they practiced 
agriculture. The change from agricultural to the pastoral would 
be indicated in the Bible by the dispute which ended so tragically 
between the brothers Cain and Abel. But if, according to the idea 
of Castes, we are to understand the shepherds, at least in this con- 
nection, as sacerdotal pastors we shull find this to be largely allegorical 
and to be the more difficult to understand in that the name Cain is 
a name in the old language not only to express the king-priest, but 
in more modern language to express a priest. It means also the 
same as the name Seth (which is Chaeth or Chaethan) and is 
exchangeable therewith, which was anciently one of the names of 
the Sun or the Sun-God, as well as of the sea or ocean, which, you 
perceive, must be originally Seth or Cain respectively. It is one 
of the cosmogonical appellations as well as being the name of a 
man, while Abel, besides being a man's name, is the name they have 
wantonly transposed into Bael. 

When, therefore, we begin with the history of ancient Egypt or 
Chaldaea we have a vast scope of time to contemplate the rise 
and nourish and fall of nations; and when we study this subject of 
the history of mankind in connection with the Bible and Natural 
Theology and closely observe every step of the progress of the 
history of nations, more especially of this shepherd race which we 
trace in the first book of the Bible, we have surely sufficient data 
to enable us to pursue an investigation, perhaps to a reasonably 
satisfactory conclusion, as to whether or not any law underlies the 
life of man, according to which the events of history come about 
in some such cyclical way as may be implied in the theological 
expression, " the fulfillment of prophecy in history." 

And now in regard of what is called " the providential dealings of 
God in relation to men " it is well known there are recorded in the 
Bible two captivities of the Israelitish people to Assyria and two 
captivities of the Jewish people to Chaldaea, all on account of the 
sins of commission and omission of those people against God ; from 
the time of the Exodus of the Israelites, which I in my " Critique 
of the History of Ancient Egypt ' ' have found to have taken 
place, sometime in the reign of that Shepherd-pharaoh called 
Sesostris the great, to the revolt of the ten tribes under 
Jereboam the son of Nebat from Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, 
there intervened, as according to my computation, about 519 years. 
From this time to the first captivity of the Israelites to Assyria by 
Tiglath Pileser, in the reign of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, there 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 449 

passed about 200 years, which would leave that event to have taken 
place in about the 770tb year B. C. In about 28 years later, or say 
in about 742 B. C, the Israelites, now the subjects of Hosea, the 
immediate successor of Pekah on the throne of the kingdom of 
Israel, were carried away captives in large numbers by Shalman- 
eser, the then king of Assyria. This is the captivity designated 
as that of the ten tribes, from which there is no historically re- 
corded return or restoration. In about 623 B. C. Nebuchad- 
nezzar, the first of that name who was King of Babylon, carried 
captive into Chaldaea Jehoiachin the king of Judah and, as the 
narrative says, " all the princess and mighty men of valour in 
Jerusalem ' ' — ten thousand captives of this sort — ' * and all the 
craftsmen and smiths, leaving none remaining except the poorest 
sort of people of the land." At this time Nebuchadnezzar ap- 
pointed Mataniah, the uncle of Jehoachin, to be king at Jerusalem 
instead of his nephew and changed his name to Zeclekiah. It was 
in about 11 years later, or say in 612 B. C, that the same Nebuch- 
adnezzar sacked Jerusalem, burned its temple, broke down the 
city's walls and transported to Chaldaea all the people left in the 
city after the captivity of 11 years before. This captivity at Baby- 
lon is said to have lasted for 70 years, so that it is doubtful if any 
of those taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar ever saw again their 
native land, while it is reasonable to understand in accordance with 
the narrative that their children and grandchildren were restored to 
their patrimony. It was in the beginning of the reign of the 
Medo-Persian King Cyrus over the Chaldaeans that the restoration 
of the Jews to the land of their fathers took place, and it was some 
years later that, acting under a commission issued by Artaxerses, 
Ezra, a priest andNehemiah, a chieftain of the people, with a large 
company descended of the same nation, went up from Chaldaea to 
Jerusalem and effected a much-needed reformation among the disor- 
deriy elements of the returned Jews, at the same time strengthening 
the hands and encouraging the hearts of the orderly and patriotic 
who were endeavoring to build again the city and temple and to newly 
organize and establish their own old national theocratical polity. 
Our learned investigators agree that the Hebrew became a 
sacred language only after the Babylonian captivity, that is after 
the old thought of Phoenicia had returned from Babylon clothed 
in a. Chaldaean garb. The old Hebrew or Phoenician alphabetic 
characters were in the interval exchanged for the Chaldaean, 
which is what amongst us now is called the Hebrew alphabet. 
29 



450 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Now, as I have mentioned before, all of those captivities enumer- 
ated are set down in the book of books as properly retributions on 
account of the sins of commission or of omission of the Israelitish 
and Jewish peoples, by which it might appear that the law referred 
to as underlying the life of man, whereby the events of his life, as 
well as the history of nations do come about, may be occasionally 
attempered with justice as well as mercy and that this law is on the 
whole, but the will of the supreme God. It is, however, certain 
that only after the advent of Christ and through means of his 
revelation man's free agency became so apparent as that it must 
have been apprehended by all. 

But now, if it be true, as perhaps nobody doubts it is, that it 
was on account of the sins of those peoples and of their rulers 
the captivities referred to took place, then it may be reasonably 
asked why might not those captivities have been avoided by those 
peoples and their rulers having lived in a godly and acceptable 
way and manner? Or does any one of sane mind argue that those 
peoples were necessitated by some law underlying their life to be 
sinners by omission and by commission against God, against their 
own will and against themselves? AVould not such an argument 
point to a reductio ad absurdum; for God being the source of all 
reason and the foundation of all reasoning, it is evident not only 
that he does not contradict reason but is not unreasonable in his 
requirements? 

It will of course be kept in mind that there are two captivities 
recorded of the Israelitish kingdom to Assyria and two of the Jew- 
ish kingdom to Chaldaea; and that between the captivity of the 
Israelites in the time of Pekah and that of the ten tribes in the time 
of his successor Hosea there intervened about 28 years ; while be- 
tween the partial captivity of the Jews in the days of Jehoiachin 
and the more complete captivity in the reign of Zedekiah, his suc- 
cessor, there intervened about 11 years, thereby making this last 
captivity to have begun in about 612 B. C. 

It is to the time of this great tribulation, called " the captivity 
at Babylon for 70 years," that the events of new revelation for 
that time recorded in the book of Daniel belong. In the 2nd chap- 
ter of that celebrated book we find Daniel not only discovering but 
interpreting to Nebuchadnezzar his dream of the great historic 
imao'e, which foreshows the four i<reat historic monarchies in sue- 
cession, ending with a fifth, which is the kingdom of the son of 
man : this fifth supplants and exists in the place of all that had 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 451 

preceded it upon the earth. In his Vllth chapter is his vision of 
the four great beasts (which is a repetition of the general idea con- 
tained in the historical image) and which symbolize in their chron- 
ological order the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedonian 
and the Roman empires. This last (or rather the empires which 
grew out of it) is supplanted by the everlasting kingdom of the 
Ancient of Days or of the son of man, referred to in the other by 
the stone cutout of the mountain without hands, and which maybe 
called in reference to the preceding, the fifth kingdom upon earth. 
Daniel's vision of the ram and the he-goat, contained in his 
Vlllth chapter, refers, in the order of the symbols, to the Medo- 
Persian and Macedonian empires. The ram had two horns, of 
which the second was higher than the first and it came up last. 
Persia became in time a more renowned and more powerful 
monarchy than ever Media, the more ancient monarchy of the two, 
had been. The he-goat came from the west, on the face of the 
whole earth, and touched not the ground with his feet in his pro- 
gress; and between his eyes he had " a notable horn." The one 
empire of Alexander the great is here referred to in the he-goat 
and the single horn and the remarkable rapidity with which that 
renowned son of Philip and pupil of Aristotle oonquered Asia, in 
the way in which the he-goat passes over space without striking the 
ground with his foot. The he-goat has one remarkable horn be- 
tween his eyes ; he came from the west on the face of the whole 
earth and with such rapidity that his feet touched not the ground. 
And this he-goat came to the ram that had horns, which (ram) 
says the prophet, I had seen standing before the river, and ran into 
him in the fury of his power. And I saw him come close unto the 
ram and he was moved with anger against him and smote the ram 
and broke his horns ; and there was no power in the ram to stand 
before him, but he cast him down to the ground and stamped upon 
him and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand. 
Therefore the he-goat waxed very great and when he was strong 
the great horn was broken and instead of it came up four notable 
ones towards the four winds of heaven." This plainly shows Alex- 
ander's rapid conquest and his remarkably sudden demise. The 
prophet sees the two-horned ram standing before a river. A per- 
son would think this referred to the river Euphrates, which was 
afterwards regarded as the boundary on the east of the Roman Em- 
pire ; but it was on the banks of the river Issus in Asia Minor that 
Alexander after crossing the Hellespont attacked and defeated 



452 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Darius at the head of his Medes and Persians and the flower of the 
chivalry of Asia. Alexander during his life did not lose the domin- 
ions he acquired in battle ; but he lost his life through indiscretion. 
Having subdued India and the ancient lands of the Arj^ans he re- 
turned and died at Babylon, it is said, under the influence of wine 
and as the effect of general self-indulgence. On his career of sub- 
jugation Alexander appears to have started wrong. He should 
have first subdued himself and then kept in subjection his passions 
and desires. He should not have been so stiff-necked and stubborn 
as to refuse to his preceptor, Aristotle, the privilege of accompany- 
ing him on his Asiatic campaign. He should have taken him along 
and betimes considered his dictations at least on non-military matters. 
In thus doing he would have given proof of sagacity in stateman- 
ship ; but the young man was carried away by his military projects 
and the anticipation of the glory to be acquired by him on the fields 
of Asia by the skillful manipulation of his deep-standing and long- 
speared, invincible Thracian and Grecian phalanxes. He accom- 
plished his vast military projects, but his vanity conquered him, left 
him lying beneath the earth, despoiled of all his vain grandeur. 

The lesson the life and death of Alexander teaches to men of all 
time is that they should deny themselves of what is evidently in- 
jurious to their health or morals or anything by the use of which 
they might injure others: that they should moderate and govern 
their desires in order that they might enjoy the longer and the 
more. 

In the prophecies of Daniel not only the whole ground of the 
consecutive history from the time of the seventy years' captivity to 
Christ, but down along the course of time to the final triumph of 
Christianity, is clearly foreshown symbolically. For any one 
acquainted with the history to fail to apprehend the meaning of 
the prophecies is, we should decide, impossible. The spirit of 
prophecy has its own peculiar way of setting forth symbolically the 
combinations of polities and the events in history or, symbolically, 
the complicated way in which the events would in their times be 
developed. 

After the four empires which arose instead of that of Alexander, 
namely, the Egyptian or African, the Assyrian or Asiatic, the 
Lydian or that of Asia Minor, and the Macedonian or Grecian of 
Europe, there arose the Roman Empire into which Christianity 
was first introduced. But the prophecies of Daniel extend farther 
down in time than the Roman Empire proper and embrace, as a 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 453 

wheel within a wheel, though obscurely, those developed more 
fully in the Book of Revelation. These are known in history as 
the state and church Christian systems of government, viz. : the 
Greek-Catholic system, the Eoman Catholic system, the Anglican 
Catholic system and the Lutheran-German Catholic system. The 
Lutheran system, as well as the Anglican, is Catholic as is ex- 
pressed in their creeds, and was understood by their founders who 
never claimed to have separated from their so-called mother church 
of Rome. The prophecies of Daniel, I say, extend farther down 
than those systems of government, called of state and church, even 
to the final triumph of true Christianity in a general government of 
the people, for the people, by the people, which may be called a 
Christian democracy. Such a dominion those prophesies give us 
to understand will supplant all earthly kingdoms, and may prop- 
erly be called the kingdom of the Son of Man, or the Ancient of 
Days, God and his Christ being recognized therein as the supreme, 
spiritual governors. 

In the prophecies of Revelation is a fuller setting forth of the 
fourth empire of Daniel, symbolized by the legs and feet of the 
historic human image; from the dust of which, when ground into 
powder by the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, arises 
the everlasting kingdom of the Son of Man. 

And now for a while speaking in reference to those who claim 
that the prophecies of the book of Daniel, with their parallels of 
the book of Revelation, which evidently point to the state and 
church Christian systems enumerated, are not yet fulfilled in his- 
tory I may say that as it is undeniably evident that those prophe- 
cies point to those systems, so it is quite as evident to one who 
soberly and in an unprejudiced spirit considers the subject that 
those prophecies have, to a large extent and very notably, been 
fulfilled. But it is answered with a triumphant air to one who 
maintains this such fulfillment, that the church of Rome is still 
standing erect in great strength, and that only a short time ago, 
for instance, the foundation of a Catholic university was laid at the 
city of Washington, on which occasion were present to see and to 
be seen and to hear Cardinal Gibbons deliver his address, a large 
number of leading Roman Catholics from the United States and 
elsewhere. It is thus asked with an air of triumph: " If the church 
of Rome has been overthrown, as according to your application of 
history to prophecy, how does it happen that this church is making 
such conspicuous progress in the world, how adding such large 



454 CEEATOE AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

numbers from other religious denominations to its faith by conver- 
sion, how so greatly aggrandizing itself by wealth and numbers? " 
But the idea of the church of Rome, considered as a religious body, 
is not quite the same as that of the temporal sovereignty of the pope 
of Rome, a sovereignty which he exercised independently, and for 
such long ages in his own right; and all this bluster as to the in- 
crease in numbers and wealth of its members which is 
largely of the earth earthy, is of no account when confronted 
with the simple fact of the temporal power, so called, having 
been taken away from the Pope by Victor Emmanuel, the king 
of Italy, in 1871 A. D., at the time at which the prophecy 
indicated it should be taken away. Consequent upon the fall of 
Napoleon III, the then supporter of the Pope's temporal power, 
in his war with Prussia, occurred the deprivation of the Pope 
of his temporal power, and this has been reckoned by some able 
chronologers to have been in 1260 calendar years after the as- 
sumption of temporal power by the bishop of Rome, which would 
leave that assumption to have been in effect, although not then 
recognized by international law, in the person of the immediate 
successor of Pope Gregory, called the great, in about the year 610 
after the birth of Christ. For 610 years, therefore, before the 
bishop of Rome had, in effect, become temporal chief magistrate of 
that city (which temporality was afterwards enlarged into that 
Italian territory well known as the Papal States) Christianity was 
existent at Rome. It does not from the prophecies appear that 
the temporal power can ever again be assumed by the bishops of 
Rome or if assumed that it can be exercised by them for any re- 
markable length of time. It has had its day and in regard to its 
branches of England and Germany and its kindred institution from 
the same root of Constantinople, now and long established in 
Russia and elsewhere, it will as to its present arbitrary status of 
church and state, like the waning moon, go on waning unto the 
end. As the Anglican and Lutheran churches express in their 
creeds they are branches of the Catholic church, branches from the 
same stem as was the church of Rome, which has so recently lost 
the Pope's temporal power. It appears, therefore, as if the 
branches of the Catholic church, called Anglican and Lutheran, 
will ultimately become dissociated from the temporal power and 
the kingdoms of which they are will become Kingdoms of the Son 
of Man. Instead of the monarchical systems of government, 
of which they are, it appears as if there would arise governments 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 455 

of the people, after the manner of republics, governments wherein 
the prevailing religion (being that of God and his Christ) will be 
supported by the people themselves and in which true religion will 
largely prevail. What a happy change for the peoples of those 
countries if the governments now existent in most of them were 
changed into republics ; then would the peoples subject to the 
monarchical governments now of Europe and Asia rejoice and be 
glad when they would find themselves in the possession and exer- 
cise of their natural rights. 

It does not seem to me that the religion promulgated by Jesus 
Christ is at all in its proper place when allied to monarchical power. 
Its genius is that of democracy and represented fairly, as according 
to the spirit of its founder, is generally sure in all quarters of the 
world of a fair appreciation and support. Its spirit being so much 
contrary to that of the natural man as to be fairly opposed to many 
of the natural propensities in which worldly men and earthly rulers 
indulge, it is no wonder that the head of the church, become head 
of the state, should find himself in such position oftentimes as not 
to be conducting himself or acting on the side of Christ, but against 
him, and so should be fairly called Antichrist. The spirit of Christ 
is repugnant to the inclinations and propensities of the natural man 
in which so many people and rulers of this world indulge. How 
ineffably wicked religion (improperly so called) must become when 
it finds itself not only allied but bound by law to all the oppression 
and hypocrisy implied in monarchy and all the ramifications sub- 
servient to its support and aggrandizement ! We have this abund- 
antly exemplified in the case of the Inquisition spoken of before, 
which existed actively for hundreds of years in succession, and was 
largely administered in its offices and operations by priests applied 
to whose character the terms unfeeling and brutal are not sufficiently 
strong. Organized class necessitated ignorance in the people, while 
taking care to punish severely the people for their ignorance. 
Where can it be found recorded that Jesus Christ either persecuted 
or authorized the persecution or punishment of any one on account 
of ignorance or on account of what is commonly called " unbelief, " 
which last, of course, arises from ignorance and as such should not 
be regarded as criminal, even if it should in some cases be regarded 
as culpable in its nature. But how ineffably wicked must be the 
priest of any so called religion who necessitates the ignorance of 
the people and then countenances their persecution and punishment, 
even by means of the crudest of deaths, on account of their ignorance, 



456 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

nominally on account of their " unbelief," unbelief however of 
something whereof they were ignorant and did not apprehend the 
principle or comprehend the bearing. And this is exactly what the 
priests called Catholic did for long ages by means of the Inquisition 
and by means otherwise named. And why did they do this ? Simply 
because of their then position in their unrighteous and unholy bond 
with earthly powers. And more or less has it been the genius of 
ecclesiasticism in all the historic ages and systems whereof we have 
knowledge to attach itself as far as possible to the governing classes 
and to favor the keeping of the masses of the people in ignorance 
in order to their subjection to themselves. Of course this remark 
does not noticeably refer to the priesthoods existing in this republic, 
where they are dependent for existence and for support upon the 
will and the voluntary contributions of the people; but even in 
these systems, such and so simple as they are, I have heard it 
remarked that the sacerdotal class, except in the case of a compara- 
tively few notorious exceptions, are seldom found leaders in any 
movement which has in view the simplification of old doctrines or 
their explication from an apprehensible and practical standpoint. 
If there be anything in this account it would appear that this class 
clannishness must needs be chronic and that it was sacerdotal clan- 
nishness on the one hand and his own broad humanity and unpre- 
judiced unsectarianism on the other which occasioned to Jesus Christ 
in his day so much trouble from the Rabbis, Scribes and Pharisees, 
and will occasion to those who follow in his steps in all ages the 
like kinds of troubles from the like classes of persons. 

The artificiality of class in the old monarchical-sacerdotal sys- 
tems of government so tended to rigid adherence to rule in proceed- 
ino- that it was not a difficult matter for the well balanced and 

c5 

astute mind to divine, or at least to guess, what a man of a given 
class would be thinking about on a given occasion, what kind of 
question he would ask, or what kind of answer return to the query 
of another. I have sometimes myself, though being a compara- 
tively simple person in my habits of life and of thought, deemed 
it unnecessary to ask questions on occasions from individuals of 
certain classes, resting assured that I already knew the answer I 
would receive, and when other persons of considerable mental acu- 
men would most likely have asked the questions. 

Monarchical class ideas or notions are growing too fast in this 
republic. There is this remarkable distinction yet, however, be- 
tween our men, whose education has been accomplished in our best 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 457 

institutions (which are rightfully conceded to be equal in effective- 
ness to the best institutions in foreign lands), and those whose 
education has been accomplished in those foreign institutions, that 
the former are generally so democratic in their manners that they 
will through policy or good nature associate with almost all classes 
of the people, or through ideas of utility or advantage undertake 
and carry on any kind of honest business; while the latter are 
unwilling to associate with those, whom they would deem (as ac- 
cording to the class system of ideas entertained in their own old 
patristic institutions), below their own place in the scale of dignity 
or to undertake to do any business or exercise themselves in any 
employment which they would deem below their dignity. This is 
the general rule, which, of course has very many exceptions — the 
product of monarchical-sacerdotal institutions sometimes turning 
out a true republican in principle and practice, while the product 
of the simple republican institutions may develop in principle and 
practice all the feelings and notions peculiar to monarchical- 
sacerdotal class. I, for instance, have had a young and compara- 
tively inexperienced parson, a son of this republic and of its 
educational institutions, tell me confidentially and in what I would 
understand as not only an undemocratic, but an unchristian spirit, 
that he had no desire for a great proportion of poor people in his 
congregation, while, on the other hand, I knew a professor of the 
learned languages, who had occupied certain " chairs " or positions 
in certain colleges of high standing in this country, and who had 
been of English birth and educated at the University of Oxford, 
and this man I thought to be as christianly humble and as truly 
democratic as any son of the republic or of its institutions could 
be supposed to be. 

But, now, those who assert that the propehcies of Daniel and 
Revelation have not been fulfilled, at least in the Roman system, 
go on triumphantly asserting that the church of Rome stands 
there to day as firm as the rock whereof St. Peter spake, as 
that rock against which the powers of hell should not prevail. 
But did not St. Peter evidently speak of the primitive church or 
the church of Christ at the time of its origination, and not of 
the state and church systems of government, which arose out of 
that in several centuries after? Even the doctrines of the church, 
as established in the state and church systems of Constantino ami 
Theodosius in the fourth century, were so mystified as to be in 
effect considerably different from the doctrines of Christ. And so 



458 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

they went on still more obscuring the doctrines of the gospel, their 
object evidently being to confine all knowledge concerning the 
doctrines of the established religion to one class of men, who, in 
company with the monarchs, should hold the reins of government 
and keep the masses of the people in a state of complete submis- 
sion and subjection. Woe, then, was sure to accrue to any com- 
moner, who, having acquired any true religious knowledge, 
undertook to apply it publicly to the enlightenment of the masses. 
And even down to the time of our immediate fathers, when the 
public school system was first introduced in this country, with all 
is privileges made common to all, the education, such as it was, in . 
all countries was carried out in a theoretical way, the object being 
evidently to keep knowledge principally confined to one class of 
men at the head of affairs. Text-books on the arts and sciences 
were, therefore, until comparatively recent times very puzzling as 
well as statelv and bombastic in the language of their formulas. 
Common people were, of course, known to be averse to such lan- 
guage and the greatest nervousness existed among those who 
assumed to themselves to be the upper or ruling classes, lest the 
agriculturist, the mechanic and the hackman should, bv dint of 
self-effort and self-denial in process of education attain to the posi- 
tion in which the title of gentleman could not, on their own prin- 
ciples, justly be denied him. 

The objectors to the positionof the prophecies referred to as ful- 
filled are, of course, generally ready to allow that Jesus Christ, when 
on earth, introduced a new dispensation instead, and as a modifica- 
tion of the old Jewish one introduced eighteen centuries before by 
Moses, while they cannot help admitting nor shut their eyes to the 
fact that the Jewish church is still existing in the world. All 
Christian peoples allow that Christianity is that dispensation which 
supplanted Judaeism and still they cannot help admitting that Ju- 
daeism has come down through the ages co-existent with, although 
understood as distinct from Christianity. Even so may it be under- 
stood in the future that in our age even in this last quarter of the 
19th century of Christianity, is introduced instead of the state and 
church systems, which have hitherto existed under the Christian 
name, the dominion of the Son of Man or the more fully recognized 
and acknowledged kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth, while other 
systems which may represent extravagant and baseless assumptions, 
as well as false doctrines may be co-existent with it. This is all 
plainly foreseen and foretold by the prophet Daniel in the VIEth 



HISTOEY IN CONNECTION WITH PEOPHECY. 459 

chapter and 12th and 13th verses of his book; where it says in ref- 
erence to this period and the downfall successively of the Babylon- 
ian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedonian and the Roman empires: 
" As concerning the rest of the governments they had their do- 
minion taken away, yet a prolonging in life was given them. I 
saw in the night visions and behold one like the Son of Man came 
with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days and 
they brought him near before him. And there was given him do- 
minion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations and lan- 
guages should serve him ; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, 
which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be 
destroyed . ' ' Here it is literally said that ' i sl prolonging in life ' ' was 
given to those old supplanted systems and so in the prophecies of the 
Book of Revelation which are parallel to or mean the same as these, it 
is always said or implied that the old supplanted systems should co- 
exist with the new dispensation, but in a waning condition. The 
argument at any time brought forward, that the Greeks, the Ro- 
man, the Anglican, the Abyssinian, the Armenian or the Lutheran 
church-systems, for example, continue to exist in a nourishing con- 
dition proves absolutely nothing against the position that in our 
age is the begiuning of a new era, an era which in its fullness will 
realize the objects of the introduction of Christianity nearly nine- 
teen centuries ago. And as a true and just system of government 
and of religion will, as consequent, descend in time, even so there 
is not unlikely to be co-existent upon the earth, to a less or a 
greater extent, unjust and oppressive systems of government as well 
as systems of religion more or less fraudulent and false. 

A fair examination into the subject of the orgin of Christianity 
by an examination (and comparison with each other) of the four 
Gospels and the book of the Acts of the Apostles from the original 
Greek, such an examination as that carried out in my work entitled 
" Cosmotheologies and Indications of Judgment," shows clearly 
that the only real historical origin which can with justice be claimed 
for Christianity is that or such as that claimed for it by the primi- 
tive sect of Jews known in history as Nazarenes. This is the only 
historic origin claimed for it which the analysis and comparison with 
each other of the four Gospels and the book of the Acts, and the 
ultimate synthesis of these showing wherein their unity consists, 
will justify any one in assuming. This result removes, at the out- 
set, a great deal of difficulty out of the way of a full acceptance of 
the doctrine of a real historical origin for Christianity, showing 



460 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

that it is no fiction, for by this Nazarene account it is shown there 
is no reason whatever adducable to prove that it did not have such 
an historical origin as the Nazarene account thereof set forth- 
This account it must be remarked (unintentionally perhaps and 
without mentioning it in words), relegates all miracles, so called, 
to the cosmical phenomena and operations, which we, of course, in 
our view, yet understand as the operations of the Almighty God, 
well knowing that the simplest cosmical phenomena are such stu- 
pendous miracles as man cannot produce or account for. Is not 
the way and manner or the phenomena of the existence of man 
himself such an astounding miracle as he has not yet been able to 
account for? Whence the universe or whence himself he cannot 
tell ; what the destination of it or of himself puzzles him to find 
out. The cosmos itself, with its ever changing phenomena, is the 
great, the astounding miracle ever present to our senses, and which 
man is never able to account for. Is it not, however, fairly sup- 
posable that the power which has originated all those things and 
which does effect all the changes in them can at will effect some 
remarkable changes in and through the instrumentality of man? 
While accepting the account of the origin of Christianity handed 
down by the Nazarenes, which gives such origin a fair historical 
significance, we are at liberty to consider the supposability of the 
miraculous fillings in in the narratives of the Gospels and the book 
of the Acts, the authorship whereof, at least to some extent, is 
perhaps truthfully attributable to some Christian Israelites of the 
Alexandrian school, who did such work additional to that of the 
authors of those books whose names are to them appended. 

The order with which those prophecies of Daniel and Revelation 
referred to have been fulfilled and the precision as to time with 
which the events of their fulfillment have happened, evidently sug- 
gests some such law as underlying the life of man, whereby the 
events of human history do come about, as that by which we have 
in their seasons the cosmical phenomena of day and night and the 
seasons of the year. That some such law as that referred to, 
therefore, exists there would appear not only fair but, as some 
might think, demonstrative evidence ; while at the same time there 
may be reason to believe that the action of the will of man may 
effect to modify that law, at least to some extent. 

And, as to this, the general conclusion we are disposed to draw 
from the whole is that man may, to a certain extent, avail to 
counteract the law which would otherwise limit and govern him, 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 461 

" and this brings us necessarily to the theological idea of the law, 
so called, being the ever present will of the Supreme God, and of 
the position of Christianity among the religions and peoples of the 
earth being that of prayerful aggression, and its mission that of 
prayerful militancy. 

Christianity properly apprehended teaches man who he is as well 
as his susceptibilities of refinement and improvement. It is emi- 
nently an aggressive religion, being the proclamation of a king, 
whose rightful dominion is the whole world which is now to a large 
extent up in rebellion against him and whose undoubted right it is to 
subdue it to obedience to himself. The weapons of its warfare are 
not carnal but spirtual, being love and faith and active godliness. 
It is eminently a civilizer, in its progress, at the same time,* sub- 
duing the world to its rule and to its genuine civilization. That it 
makes the wilderness and the solitary place to flourish and the 
deserts to rejoice and blossom as the rose can be proved and illus- 
trated from numberle»s sources in its present and past history. 

What a weedy and thorny garden is the human mind if left to 
itself or until it has been subjected to the process of culture ! The 
mind must needs be plowed and harrowed, the weeds plucked up 
with their roots, the bad or superfluous branches pruned off, the 
thorn bushes completely eradicated. The tender grasses and fruit 
must be allowed to spring up without being smothered or choked 
by weeds, thorns or brambles. 

The mission of true Christianity is to bring man back into the 
blessed and Eden-like condition in which he was originally created. 
The first Adam by his disobedience lost his estate of innocence 
and human perfection, his estate of Eden. The second Adam has 
now possession of Paradise and is bringing all that will obey him 
back into that state again. The second Adam has Paradise in 
possession and is so entirely unselfish as to being its sole possessor 
that he is giving a deed in fee simple, out of his possession, to all 
who will obey Him. To every man, woman and child on earth, or 
that ever will be on earth, who will obey him and fight under his 
banner, he will give a deed in fee simple of Paradise, so that all 
who will may become with him joint possessors of his estate. 
The estate of Paradise, is practically unlimited, being of such a 
nature and extent as thut giving of it doth not diminish its area; 
so that the estate which each one may come into possession of 
by belief in and obedience to Christ is practically unlimited. 
Christ, therefore, may and will be forever, disposing of estates in 



462 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Paradise to his followers and yet his own estate be nothing 
diminished thereby. The possession and exercise daring life in 
one's own person of all the graces of the true Christian character 
is no beggarly estate assuredly, but it implies self-denial in its use, 
and will have its reward. It is bv fighting for it also, fighting I 
mean not with carnal but with spiritual weapons, that one comes 
into the possession of this Paradisaical estate. By fighting under 
the banner of Christ, imitating his leader in all self-denial and 
active godliness, being with him in all the phases of the battle of 
life and gaining the well-fought victory with him there one comes 
into possession of the estate of Paradise. Without Christ one can 
do nothing and if one try to obtain the spoils of victory without 
him one will ultimately awake to the realization that he has simply 
dissipated his energies, has scattered his powers abroad. All this 
is plain and will be acceptable to the minds of all truth-loving men 
when properly presented to and conceived by them. 

But, speaking of this subject in no theological tone or aside from 
any theology, so-called, I may say briefly that the world is a vast 
battle-field, each human being in this field, when in proper condi- 
tion, being in battle array to subdue what is called nature, which 
if his fully bended powers and energies succeed not in doing it will 
surely subdue him. Man's opponent in this great contest is sub- 
jective and objective and in this order must this opponent be re- 
duced to subjection ; for man must first subdue the irregular and 
wild tendencies of nature in himself and then and not till then is 
he prepared to subdue them in others. When, then, he preaches 
he means what he says ; for he practices and has been accustomed 
to practice what he preaches. People trust that preacher who they 
have reason to believe practices what he preaches, lives out in his 
own life what he inculcates for the practice and life conduct of 
others. 

The doctrine of the omnipresence of God, which necessarily in- 
cludes his omnipotence and omniscience, I, with all true religionists, 
have reason to believe. This very position renders it necessary for 
us to understand the nature and the character of Christ. Where 
in John's 1st Epistle, chapter V., verse 19, it reads: "We know 
that we are of God and that the whole world lieth in wickedness," 
the proper translation would have it: " The whole world lieth in the 
wicked one." This plainly suggests how very near to us the devil, 
our great adversary, may be; and how that the nature of Christ is 
that he is the opponent of the wicked one; and that his office is to 



HISTORY IN CONNECTION WITH PROPHECY. 463 

lead his followers on to victory, to supreme dominion over the world, 
the flesh and the devil, to lead them on to supreme dominion ulti- 
mately over earth and hell. The knowledge of this fact, namely, 
of the nature, character and office of Christ, the knowledge simply 
of who he is, what he is and what he is about, may be called the 
climax or ultimate of science and should leave us to listen with as 
much gladness, contentedness and complacency to the gospel's mes- 
sage from the unlettered man, who feels himself commissioned by 
Christ to its promulgation, as to the most finished and elaborate 
theological discourse of the most accomplished, college educated 
doctor of divinity. Christ's mission is to the poor ; for all must needs 
become poor in spirit before they will give any attention to his 
message or become fit subjects for his kingdom. The subjects or 
citizens of the kingdom of Christ are in the world but not of it. 
Those who are in and of the world belong to the kingdom of the 
wicked one. The kingdom of Christ in the world is, therefore, 
always easily distinguishable, by various marks, from the world 
itself, which is the kingdom of the wicked one ; and these two king- 
doms are always in conflict with each other, "the old serpent" 
trying to persist in holding the fort of the world, wherein he has 
been so long and so strongly intrenched, and the forces of God and 
his Christ, the forces of faith and of active godliness striving con- 
tinually to dislodge him therefrom, a feat they have no doubt they 
will ultimately accomplish. 

Things come in their order in the physical cosmos and, as said 
before, some such order appears to have place in the course of 
human history. But man is a free agent within this such order, 
the Christ, his representative, being He who was past, is present 
and is to be, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last. 
And, in this way you can clearly perceive, that all the natural 
sciences do come within the circle of Theology, natural Theology, 
you say; very good, and Science, commonly so-called, so far as it 
is true, must be always consonant with theology, when all is prop- 
erly understood. 

One great advantage of a proper and extended study of history 
in connection with religion is that it cannot fail to show to man his 
proper position in existence, uniting, as it were, earth with heaven; 
his real relation to the supreme and to all the objects of creation, 
which are objective and relative to him; what sort of a life he 
should live, subjectively considered in relation to himself, and ob- 
jectively in relation to all other persons and things; what courses 



464 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

he should pursue and what avoid in regard to the governing and 
ordering of his conduct and manners in life; and in regard to his 
making, executing or obeying laws; what duties he owes in partic- 
ular to his family, to his race and country, and in general to the 
world at large ; what reason he has for the recognition of God 
and of his claims upon him, in particular, for the promotion of his 
cause and the accomplishment of his will in the world ; and for the 
recognition of the religion of the Gospel of Christ, as, when 
properly apprehended and understood, the simplest, the truest and 
the best religion for mankind in general that has ever been promul- 
gated on the earth. 




D1SC0UKSES. 



On Providence and Predestination. 



Romans, Ch. VIII, verse 28. 

" And we know that all things work together for good to them 
that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." 

This subject we shall consider under two heads : first, as to those 
that love God ; and, second, as to those that are the called according 
to his purpose, or, in other words, them that are predestinated and 
elected to salvation. The moral world or the world of mankind may 
be considered as made up of two parts, namely, those that love God 
and live in obedience to his requirements, and those that love him not 
and do not order their life and conversation as he requires. It may also 
be considered as one whole, namely, mankind, one part of whom choose 
to love and obey God, and the other part of whom live and act in a 
contrary way and manner. Each and every human being has in- 
herent in them the principles of good and evil, either of which they 
may cultivate and develope to an almost infinite extent. The culti- 
vation and development of either of these is a matter of choice with 
the individual, that is, each rational being is a free agent, free to 
choose either the evil or the good course of life, free to be and to do 
either good or evil. They who choose to be good and to do good, to 
follow the godly course of life, are those alluded to in our text as 
them that love God and to whom all things work together for good, 
30 (465) 



466 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and they are otherwise spoken of as the children of God. And they 
who follow the evil course of life, who are and do evil, either from 
negligence or deliberate choice, are they, on the contrary, who are 
called the children of evil, children of their father the devil, whom 
they serve and obey. The great majority of the human race are of 
this latter class who serve the devil and the world in a vast variety 
of ways. The small minority are they who love God, they who 
deny themselves ungodliness and worldly lusts, and live soberly, 
righteously and honestly in this present world. The character and 
law of God is written upon the face of nature and discovered in the 
pages of Revelation ; in other words we read and understand the 
character of the Deity not only from nature, but also from the experi- 
ence and the testimony of good men in past ages. A compendium of the 
law which God has imposed for the obedience of mankind is found 
in the Ten Commandments recorded in the Old Testament, and this 
law is confirmed and rendered of equal obligation upon mankind by 
the teachings of the New Testament. " Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbor 
as thyself " is the principal commandment of the Old Testament as 
well as of the New, a commandment which embraces in itself all the 
others. 

But the love of God spoken of in the text comprehends the 
whole life of real and active godliness ; it means the being good sub- 
jectively and the doing good objectively, the motive being love to 
God and for the advancement of his cause, not self-love or for self- 
aggrandizement. To them, therefore, all things, even things that 
seem perplexing and trying and vexatious and adverse, things that 
they would rather escape and be rid of, work together for good, to 
them, I say, who are actuated by this love and who live the life of 
active godliness. The true Christian life is sometimes considered a 
hard and trying one, embracing, as it does, self-denial, a foregoing 
of the lusts of the flesh and all worldly lusts, and sometimes, it may 
be, suffering persecution for truth and righteousness sake ; for we 
read in the writings of the apostle Paul that they who will live god- 
ly in this present life shall sutler persecution. But with all this 
thorny self-denial and this bitter experience, it is a comforting 
thought to the children of God that these things, even these bitter 
experiences, are working together for their good. The more devoted 
they are to, and the more active in the service of God the stronger 
the opposition Satan Avill raise against them ; but fully realizing that 
they are the children of God they know that all things are working to- 
gether for their good ; though Satan enrages the wind and the tide, 
the promise assures them the Lord will provide ; when the enemy 



PROVIDENCE AND PREDESTINATION. 467 

is coming in like a flood the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a stan- 
dard against him. It is a comforting thought, I say, to the true 
Christian, the child of God, that amid all the dangers, seen and 
unseen, through which he passes, amid all the trials, persecutions and 
snares from visible and invisible enemies, amid all the circumstances 
in which such a one is placed, whether they be adverse, adventitious 
or prosperous, all things are working together for his good ; that amid 
all the apparently unfavorable dispensations of providence his heaven- 
ly Father still retains for him a benignant countenance, though con- 
cealed from his view. The life of the true Christian, in all its various 
phases and aspects, is beautifully depicted in the " Pilgrim's Progress" 
of John Bunyan, and this appears in its true light to all who rightly 
interpret that allegory. There it is seen that the child of God, al- 
though pressed down with the knapsack of his sins and transgressions, 
has to go forward in the character of a warrior, arrayed in the com- 
plete Christian armor, having on the shield of faith, the breastplate 
of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit 
which is the true word of God, and that he has to fight strenuously 
and overcome all the enemies and opponents that appear in his way, 
a work in which, however, he is abundantly assisted by his leader 
and God. Hence the true church of God being made up of such 
self-denying and faithful soldiers is called the church Militant, that 
is, the fighting Church, the Church that fights its way into the king- 
dom of heaven, not with carnal weapons, for the weapons of its 
warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty to the pulling down 
of the strongholds of sin and Satan, but by faith and patience and 
perseverance in active godliness it overcomes all its enemies, seen 
and unseen ; the Church that obtains a complete victory over the 
world with its pomps and vanities, its allurements and enticements ; 
over the flesh with all its lusts and debasing seductions ; and over 
the devil with all his powers and agencies visible and invisible ; the 
church that presents itself before the throne of God arrayed in the 
white robes of holiness and righteousness. Every child of God hath 
in his own breast this experience, which he derives from the course 
he pursues in his onward march toward heaven ; and although there 
are scarcely two whose spiritual experiences are precisely alike yet 
the experience of all is so much alike that that of one may be said 
to be, in some sort, a copy of the other's, that is, if they ever reach 
heaven they shall have to get there by following the example of 
their leader, the captain of their salvation, who, as represented in 
the gospel, was made perfect and conquered through self-denial ; in 
short they shall arrive there only by pursuing the course of active 
godliness. There is no royal road to heaven ; people need not 



468 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

expect to oe carried there on flowery beds of ease ; no, they shall 
have to tread the path of self-denial and holiness and even suffer 
persecution for truth and righteousness sake, before they have 
attained to perfection in heavenly wisdom and knowledge, or are 
made perfect in godliness. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you 
and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you for truth 
and righteousness sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad that ye are 
accounted worthy to suffer in the cause of God; for so the world 
has maltreated the good men of all ages that have been before you. 
Rejoice for this, that when ye are contemned and despised of the 
world, ye are recognized of God : when } 7 e are excommunicated of 
the world, counted out of the world's fashionable society, ye are 
found of God and recognized as his children ; ye realize yourselves 
to be fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God. 
The children of God always rejoice in this, that they believe and 
know that all things work together for their good and that nothing 
that is really for their good will be withheld from them that live a 
godly life. The little boy or girl may sometimes desire a thing, 
which, if they receive, may prove detrimental to them, nay, may 
even do them a positive injury ; but if their request be not granted 
they may feel so hurt that they will sit sobbing and crying, and 
brooding over the slight or injury which they imagine themselves to 
have received. Even so it is sometimes the case with those of little 
experience in the true Christian life, those who have but lately 
begun to live the life of active godliness, who are apt fondly to 
imagine that the} 7 can, at the same time, serve God and the world ; 
that they can in the common way of expressing it, take both sides 
of the road with them. This they soon find to be a delusion, and 
will see that they cannot serve God and the world at the same time, 
and that they ought not to feel that they are injuring themselves by 
denying themselves the pleasures of the world, or that they are 
slighted and contemned and rebuked and reproached of the world ; 
knowing that the friendship and the pleasures of the world are at 
enmity with God, and that they cannot serve God and the world at 
the same time, they receive this contempt and persecution of the 
world as the best of omens, as indicating that they have made, and 
will make progress, in the true Christian course. Patiently and 
cheerfully enduring and persevering in the course of godliness, they 
realize that even when the adverse winds of the world's evil in- 
fluences are blowing hardest against them, when envy and pride and 
selfishness and all the powers and agencies of the prince of darkness 
are, as it were, exerting their utmost for their destruction, to defame 
their character and to blot out their name among men, that even 






PROVIDENCE AND PREDESTINATION. 469 

then all things are co-operating for their good. From the beginning 
it hath not been heard that God ever proved false to them that 
trusted in him and lived the life of godliness. Falsity and deception 
spring from the devil and are characteristic of him. 

But, as I have before intimated, the children of God patiently 
endure and cheerfully and contentedly suffer all that befalls them 
from all adverse influences, seen or unseen, while they are pursuing 
the true Christian course. Like the child that is denied of that 
which, if received might prove an injury to it, or that suffers from 
its parent a gentle chastisement for some fault or offence it had 
committed, they do not displa} r a sullen and morose temper on 
account of the slights and contempt and persecution which they 
have received, or they imagine themselves to have received from the 
world ; but they go on actively and perseveringly in the course of 
godliness, exhibiting always a cheerful and contented spirit, display- 
ing all the graces of the true Christian character, being always exem- 
plary in their life and conversation, and showing, by their whole 
spirit and deportment, that they do not regard themselves as serving 
a hard master, but that they rather regard themselves as conquerors 
of the world, having evercome it and keeping it in subjection, and 
that they feel it to be their duty to bring all men into the same posi- 
tion of conquerors of the world and heirs, yea, inhabitants of the king- 
dom of heaven. But instead of being discontented and dissatisfied 
with their lot they rather rejoice in that they are accounted worthy 
to suffer shame and persecution for the cause of God. So far as to 
them who, according to our text, love God. 

The second head under which we have proposed to consider our 
subject is as to those who are the " called " according to his purpose. 
The word " called " in this connection is another term to set forth 
the idea contained in the expression " predestinated or elected to life 
or to salvation." God is omniscient, he knows all that has come to 
pass in the past, and he knows all that will come to pass in the 
future ; the past, present and future are present to the all-wise God, 
to whom time is nothing, a thousand years being in his sight as one 
day, and one day as a thousand years. God is the ever and every- 
where present being. All events in the natural world take place in 
accordance with the course of nature. Things in the moral world, 
or in that world which exists in relation to man as a free intelligent 
agent, take place generally as man will have them to take place ; yet 
in some such way as that history repeats itself, the events of one age 
being a repetition of the events of a preceding age or of preceding 
ages. In this way the events which take place in the moral world are 
analagous to the events which take place in the natural world, in the 



470 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COST-IOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

latter of which the events of one year are merely a repetition of the 
events which took place each previous year. Predestination or election 
then, when spoken of with reference to man, has rather respect to the 
foreknowledge of God than to predetermination on his part. For we are 
told that God willeth the repentance and salvation of all mankind, or, 
that he willeth that none should perish but that all should turn from 
their evil way and live. If, therefore, it be said that God wills or predes- 
tinates all things that come to pass, it is said that he wills and predesti- 
nates misery and destruction to the wicked, and we shall have a contra- 
diction in terms, and logical contradictions, we know, imply untruth. 
Men's own wickedness and depravity bring evil and destruction to 
them. The very fact of man's free agency and consequent accoun- 
tability teaches this. For if he be a free agent he has the power of 
doing either evil or good to almost any extent he will ; and if he do 
the evil he will reap the fruits of his evil, for vice sooner or later is 
sure to bring its own reward, which will be his misery and destruc- 
tion ; but if he do the good he will experience happiness from the 
favor of God and of all good men, and a conscience void of offence 
toward God and toward men. If he be not a free agent he must, 
doubtless, be a being predestined to all that will happen to him in 
life, and if he lives a life of wickedness it must be said that God has 
willed and predestined him to that life of wickedness and conse- 
quently to destruction, and we shall again have a contradiction in 
terms which implies falsehood ; for it is said that God willeth not 
the death of a sinner but rather that he may turn from his evil way 
and live, and that he has intended salvation for all men, not willing 
that any should perish, but that all should come unto him and be 
saved. It is plain, therefore, that man is either a free accountable 
agent or a predestined being, governed, for weal or for woe, in all 
that he does or that happens to him so long as he has an existence. 
But man is evidently a free agent, an accountable being, as all law as- 
sumes : he may, however, be predestined by his fellow man or men 
to a certain course, state or condition of life. A man, for example, 
may be condemned or predestined to the galleys or the mines, or the 
state's prison for the term of his natural life, in consequence of his 
violations of the laws of his country, but it is not God that condemns 
or predestines him thus, it is his fellow-men and he himself through 
his transgressions, or they through a perversion of justice ; that is the 
cause of this predestination. Also, a child, from the natural dispos- 
ition of its parents, may be predestined to a good temper and dispo- 
sition or to a sullen and morose or even wicked one ; or he may be 
predestined to wealth and honor or to poverty and shame, accord- 
ing as he derives and inherits from his parents or from the circum- 



PROVIDENCE AND PREDESTINATION. 471 

stances of his birth and education. All this, therefore, implies and 
shows free agency in man, unless so far as men are predestinated 
by their own species. 

But notwithstanding all that has been said there is still a sense 
in which predestination may be understood as it relates to God's 
government of mankind. This sense is derived from the omnipre- 
sence and omniscience of Deity who is always and everywhere pre- 
sent in essence and intelligence, and has his purposes to accomplish 
among men and in relation to them. Men are not all alike in char- 
acter. The different nations differ from each other in a variety 
of ways. Even the individuals of the same nation or of the 
same community, and even of the same family and household, 
differ from each other in character, and that in many respects. 
They all differ from each other in physical appearance, and they 
differ just as much in their moral character, some of them being of 
good, others of bad moral character, and others again of all shades 
and degrees of moral character between these two extremes of good 
and bad. So it is analogously with the animals of different species 
or of the same species or with the trees or plants or herbs or minerals 
of different species or of the same species, they all differ from each 
other, respectively, in a variety of ways, so that even no two indivduals 
of any one particular species are exactly alike in every respect, in every 
point of view, from which they may be contemplated. Men, therefore, 
as all other beings, animate and inanimate, that pertain to the earth, 
have their differences of character, and as God makes use of men of 
all sorts of character, good and bad and middling, in that respect* to 
accomplish his purposes of benevolence or of justice among mankind, 
aad as these men are sure to accomplish the purposes of Deity before 
they leave this earthly scene, — just as sure as that the tree will not 
fall unless with old age if it be not from a shock of nature or by the 
art and power of man, which all doubtless happen in accordance 
with the will of God — men therefore, may in this sense be said to 
be predestined of God. Thus, the instruments of God's purposes 
among men arise in the course of the ages, for the most part among 
mankind themselves ; warriors that overrun nations, inflicting on 
them punishments in consequence of the retributive justice of the 
Deity, as well as cruel and oppressive rulers and magistrates ; re- 
formers to effect a change for the better in the national systems of 
religion or superstition or morals ; philanthropists and good men 
and women in various spheres of life to accomplish in various ways, 
the benevolent purposes of Deity among mankind. Now all power 
as well as benevolence has its origin in God, springs from him, and 
since God is infinitely good even so it is said with truth that God 



472 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES , ETC. 

makes all things work together for good to them that love him and 
are called according to his purpose. But some of my friends may 
be wishing to learn how they are to know whether or not they 
themselves are predestinated and elected of God to life and salva- 
tion. In answer to such an inquiry I may say : show me a human 
being who lives a godly life and believes himself or herself to be one 
of God's elect, (for if one lives not a godly life one will not have 
any such belief or confidence,) and I will show you one who is of 
the number of God's elect. Comforting thought, which may each 
one of you realize for yourselves, and glorify God in your body and 
spirit which are God's, always still keeping in mind that you are 
free moral agents, and, therefore, responsible toward God and toward 
men for the manner of your life and your actions, and that as you 
believe it to be, in the matter of predestination, so shall it be unto 
you. 



HEAVEN, HELL, AND THE JUDGMENT. 473 

On Heaven, Hell, and the Judgment. 

Matthew, ch. III. verses 1, 2 : " In those days came John the 
Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, and saying : Repent 
ye, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand." 

Luke, ch. XVI. verse 23 : " And in hell he lifted up his eyes, 
being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his 
bosom." 

Matt. ch. XVI. verse 27 : " For the Son of Man shall come in the 
glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he shall reward every 
man according to his works." The kingdom of Heaven, when 
spoken of in the New Testament, has mostly reference to the king- 
dom of Christ on earth. It refers to the true Church of Christ , and 
so in our text, John is introduced as preaching (preaching, from the 
Latin word prcecor, I proclaim, is another word for proclaiming) that 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The word heaven is an old 
Anglo-Saxon term, and signifies literally that which is heaved up, or 
elevated. The Greek word translated heaven is (oopavoq) and literally 
means the visible heavens, or the sky, in which sense the word 
heaven or heavens, is used in the Old Testament. The word heaven, 
in the sense of its application to the Christian Church, is rather 
peculiar to the New Testament. In Matt. ch. IVc verse 17, Jesus is 
represented as beginning to preach, saying : Repent, for the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand. And in ch. X. verse 7, as he sends forth 
his disciples, the twelve apostles, he commands them, saying: "And 
as ye go, preach, saying : The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Thus 
heaven has in this sense a secondary, yet a real, but not a primary 
and literal meaning. It applies to the moral world, but not to the 
physical, and represents mankind or a part of the human race as 
about to be elevated, exalted morally, by the religion of Christ. 
As the New Testament resurrection means the awakening from a 
death of sin to a life of righteousness and active godliness, which the 
preaching and inculcation of the true doctrines of the Gospel would 
effect, so the kingdom of heaven means the state of holiness and of 
active godliness, to which those who would embrace the Gospel and 
practice its precepts, would attain. And so the apostle Paul in his 
Epistle to the Romans, ch. XIV. verse 17 says : " For the Kingdom 
of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, and joy 
in the holy spirit." This, therefore, plainly shows that by heaven 
in the New Testament is meant a state of mind and of heart, and 
not a place or locality; it means the state of mind of the truly godly 
person, of the true and genuine Christian. Now, this state oi' mind 
pertains to and characterizes not only many, but one, so that even an 



474 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

individual Christian may represent the kingdom of heaven, yea, and 
may represent a great deal more than that, though this may appear 
to be an exalted state for one to have attained. And, moreover, 
heaven may represent not only one, but many, even all the truly 
godly of mankind, all real and true Christians on the face of the 
earth being members of the kingdom of heaven ; yea, v and they 
are inhabitants of that kingdom, inhabitants of heaven. And so 
John came preaching : The kingdom of heaven is at hand. He 
came introducing that blessed era when all might become members 
of the kingdom of heaven if they would but practice the doctrines 
which he taught. In the beatitudes recorded in the fifth chapter 
of Matthew it is said : Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
Kingdom of heaven. This is one point of character in which the 
heavenly state is known in Christians ; those who are of the King 
dom of heaven are of an humble and a contrite spirit. And in the 
same chapter it is said : Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God. Now, in the first chapter of John, verse 18, it is said : No 
man hath seen God at any time ; and Paul in his first epistle to 
Timothy, chapter VI. verse 16, says that no man hath seen God, or 
can see him. It therefore might appear that there is here an incon- 
sistency, but doubtless the verb, to see, means, in the case of that 
beatitude, to know or understand. Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall know God. And in Isaiah, ch. LVII. verse 15, it is 
said : " For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, 
whose name is Holy : I dwell in the high and holy place with him 
also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the 
humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." And in ch. 
LXVI. verse 2, it is said : " For all those things hath mine hand 
made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord ; but to this 
man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and 
trembleth at my word." The truly good man or woman, therefore, 
the one that is humble and of a contrite spirit and lives a truly godly 
life, God is immediately acquainted with, and such an one comes to 
know God and to be taught of him. But there may still be a sense 
in which the truly godly see God, namely, in the New Testament 
sense of Christ as God. The truly regenerate man or woman who 
lives the life of active godliness represents Christ. The apostle 
Paul, in one of his epistles, says : " It doth not yet appear what we 
shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like 
him ; for we shall see him as he is." Christ appears in every truly 
regenerate human being ; as the apostle intimates when he speaks 
of Christ being " formed in you," and " Christ in you the hope of 
glory." This, therefore, is a sense, a New Testament sense, in which 



HEAVEN, HELL, AND THE JUDGMENT. 475 

men might see God, and taken in this sense the verb "see " in the 
passage we have quoted, namely, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God," would have its literal signification. But we 
are not to understand from this that the supreme Deity, the infinite 
and invisible one who alone should be worshipped in spirit and in 
truth, can either be seen with the eye or conceived by the mind. 
Purity of heart, holiness of life, true practical godliness bring men to 
a knowledge of God such as those who follow the wicked and unholy 
ways of the world never attain to while thus living. While they are 
at home in the world, following the dictates of the flesh and of their 
wayward mind, they are strangers to God, they clo not see or know 
him ; nor does it yet appear to them what they shall be ; but when 
they have turned from their evil manner of life, when the true 
Christian character is fully formed in them, when Christ appears, 
then they recognize him, for they are like him, and they see him as 
he is. And where in Revelation, ch. XII. verse 7, it is said that : 
" There was war in heaven : Michael and his angels fought against 
the dragon ; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not ; 
neither was their place found any more in heaven. 

" And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the 
Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world ; he was cast out 
into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him, &c ; " this 
represents prophetically the contest of the primitive Church with pa- 
ganism, and its gradual as well as final victory, when established in 
the Empire by Constantine, when paganism became disestablished, 
and the gods of paganism were prostrated in the dust before trium- 
phant Christianity, or rather Christian polytheism, which Christianity 
was now fast becoming. In the prophecy Michael and his angels 
represent symbolically the whole doctrine and agency of Christianity 
as the dragon does of paganism. And the contest which is represent- 
ed to have been waged in heaven was the contest of the Church 
with the world in the world, with the existing and old-established 
religions of the world, and not a contest of any hostile powers away 
above the clouds, in regions unknown to man, and with which lie 
has nothing to do. It means the contest of the Church in the world 
with the world as well as with the invisible powers of the prince of 
darkness, a contest in which the Church gradually and ultimately 
prevailed. 

Hell is also an Anorlo-Saxon term, from hel or helan, to roof, cover 
over, or conceal, and signifies literally a place covered over or con- 
cealed. 

But as heaven in the New Testament sense signifies the state of 
mind of the truly godly, whether of one or of many, so hell signifies 



476 CREATOR AKD COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

the state of mind of the ungodly, whether of one or of many. It 
means a state of unquietness, of torment, of trouble and of appre- 
hension ; it means the opposite in every respect of righteousness, 
and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. The terms darkness and fire 
are sometimes applied to that state signifying the darkness of mind, 
ignorance, and superstition, and the disquietude and torment of soul 
in which they are who are estranged from God and do not walk in 
the way of godliness. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, as 
according to our text, it is said in Luke, ch. XVI. : " And in hell he," 
the rich man, " lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abra- 
ham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom," which parable is a symbolical 
representation showing the opposite states and conditions of the 
righteous and the wicked in the present and future. 

As the state of darkness and superstition in which the sinner is, 
is called death, so the state of sinfulness and of active ungodliness 
is called hell, which latter term always implies more than the term 
death does, at least in their New Testament significations ; it implies 
not merely carelessness and indifference on the part of the person in 
a state of sin and ungodliness, but unrest, torment, trouble, wicked- 
ness of mind, hardness of heart andreprobateness of the one in that 
unhappy state. Again, where in the book of Revelation there is 
mention made of a lake of fire and brimstone into which the wicked are 
cast and in which Satan is bound for a thousand years, &c, it means 
merely the state of the wicked, a state of reprobation, of deathlike 
sinfulness, of active ungodliness, of unrest and torment ; and this 
state pertains to many as to one, and to one as to many. This is 
the state in which those are represented as being who worship the 
beast or his image, or any false gods, idols of the eyes, of the heart, 
or of the imagination, to the neglect of the worship of the true God, 
the omnipresent infinite and invisible Deity, or to the dishonor of 
him by bestowing the worship due to him upon any visible object 
whatever ; for the infinite and infinitely glorious Deity is neither an 
object of the sense nor of the imagination, and therefore cannot be 
worshipped under any visible or conceivable form. 

Thus, all the heathen who worship false gods are in this unhappy 
state, and the greater their degree of light and knowledge, or the 
greater their advantages for acquiring light and knowledge showing 
their religious system to be false, the greater is their condemnation 
and the more miserable and desperate their condition. They are 
without the knowledge of the true God, and without any reasonable 
religious and holy hope in the world. In this state, we can see, are 
all those involved in idolatry, be this in the msedieval polythe- 
istic way or in the way of Buddhism, Brahminism or other 



HEAVEN, HELL, AND THE JUDGMENT. 477 

human personifications or in the worship~of material objects or 
demons. The holy people and the martyrs for the Christian faith 
are only worthy of being held in grateful remembrance. God 
is not pleased to have the honors that are due to him alone given to 
any object whatever; he does not suffer his glories to be given to an- 
other, nor his praise to graven images ; and those who worship false 
gods, especially those who possess or may possess knowledge to teach 
them that their practice is wrong, will realize the experience of the 
penalties of their offences in themselves. Whosoever lives a truly 
godly life, the name of that one is written in the Book of Life. 

And where it says in Revelation, Ch. XX., verses 14 and 15, that 
" death and hell were cast into the lake of fire, and whosoever was 
not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire; " 
here death and hell and the lake of fire mean three phases of the 
state of the wicked, only waxing more intense in misery and wretch- 
edness until the lowest point is reached in the lake of fire burning 
with brimstone. This last, it appears is the most miserable state in 
which human beings can be, namely, in the state represented sym- 
bolically by the lake of fire. That person is in the death-state who 
is living in sin, in the gratification of the lusts of the flesh and of the 
natural mind, and who is careless and indifferent as to the worship 
of God and the practice of true godliness. That person is in the 
hell-state who is living in sin, in the gratification of the lust of the 
flesh, and of the mind, and not only careless and indifferent as to 
the worship of God and the practice of godliness, but actively en- 
gaged in the practice of all ungodliness. While the one in the 
death-state is at home in the flesh like Moab settled on his lees, sunk 
and degraded in ignorance, dark-mindedness, superstition and sin, 
with none of the light of truth and of God shining on his soul, the 
one in the hell-state is not only degraded in ignorance, superstition 
and sin, but is an active agent in the service of Satan, in the practice 
of all ungodliness, and with all this experiences in himself the trou- 
bles and the torments characteristic of hell ; while the one in the 
state represented by the lake of fire burning with brimstone, we 
must consider to be in the worst possible condition of ungodliness, of 
despair, of hopelessness and of torment in which a human being can 
possibly be, mentally. Shall we pronounce that there is no possibility 
for one in this last-named condition, or in either of these conditions 
of the wicked, to become better and reform their life, to become, in 
short, the child of God by the practice of active godliness? We shall 
not indeed pronounce thus. Men of never so evil a character and 
disposition have it in their power to turn from their evil way and 
manner of life, from their evil and unholy dispositions and practices 



478 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

and become holy, just and good : become, in short, children of God 
by adoption and grace. To affirm that men cannot turn from their 
evil way and be good, is to affirm that they are bound by some power 
to be evil even against their will, which is the most absurb and 
groundless of doctrines. All men are free moral agents, which means, 
that they may, as they will, choose to be good or evil in life : and con- 
sequently possessing this power, men are never sunk so low but that 
they can, with the grace of God, which is always vouchsafed to the re- 
pentant and to those who, from a course of sinfulness, resolve to live a 
new life of active godliness, become good and do good, and realize that 
they are the children of God by the faith of Jesus Christ. But alas ! 
what a miserable condition men are in so long as they continue to 
live in sin and ungodliness, so long as they continue to neglect, or 
to be indifferent about their duties to God, so long as they persist 
in living unholy and ungodly lives, so long as they are estranged 
from God, enemies to God, indifferent as to him or his cause, and 
actively engaged in the service of Satan and of sin ! What a miserable 
state of darkness, of superstition, of death-like ignorance, of wicked- 
ness and torment they are in ! They are dead while they live, or 
they experience the pangs of remorse, the torments of a troubled 
conscience, or the chastising hand of a justly incensed Deity. Why 
should they not turn from their evil way and live ? What prevents 
them from doing so? Why should they not leave off their old 
wicked ways, their ungodly practices, and bear the cross of self- 
denial in the paths of true godliness ? Why should they not resurrect 
themselves, so to speak, from the state of death or hell, or a worse, 
in which they are, and by prayer and faith, and the grace of God, 
which is always vouchsafed to the penitent, live the new life of god- 
liness in the spirit. They can do so certainly ; we have said they 
can ; for they are free moral agents, and being such, they can become 
and do good if they will, and God will assist them in doing it. The 
assistance of God the penitent will obtain by faithful, trustful prayer 
to him, and by firm resolution to persevere in his cause in the way 
of active godliness. There is nothing, therefore, to prevent the 
wicke,d, sinning human beings from becoming the servants, and, at 
the same time, the children of God. Servants they have to become 
first, but they will be well repaid for their services in becoming chil- 
dren of God and joint heirs with Christ, inheritors of the kingdom of 
heaven. 

Likewise in the two last chapters of Revelation, where it describes 
the new heaven which the sons of men were to see and experience in 
due time, it means that there should be in the future (I mean the 
future as regards the time of the giving of the prophecy) a happy 



HEAVEN, HELL, AND THE JUDGMENT. 479 

era ior mankind, wherein truth should largely prevail, when men 
generally should live holy and godly lives, should deny the flesh and 
practice the life of holiness in the spirit. The same blessed era is 
foretold in Isaiah, Ch. LXV., verse 17, as follows : " For behold I 
create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be 
remembered nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice forever 
in that which I create ; for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and 
her people a joy." And in Ch. LXVI. of the same book, verse 22, 
and so on, it says, by way of promise to the Israelites : " For as the 
new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain be- 
fore me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. 
And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and 
from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before 
me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the car- 
casses of the men that have transgressed against me ; for their worm 
shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched ; and they shall be 
an abhorring unto all flesh." This last verse is by way of contrast 
to show the happy and the miserable state of the righteous and the 
wicked, which as commonlv we see would exist together in the world. 
It means, however, that at the period indicated the good would be 
far in the majority, and that the age would be characterized morally 
as an age of godliness and of blessedness. And this new creation, 
spoken of by Isaiah, is the regeneration or moral change to be affected 
in mankind spoken of in the New Testament, especially explained 
in the Gospel of John. In like manner in the second Epistle of 
Peter, Ch. III., verse 13, it says: "Nevertheless we, according to his 
promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness," which means the same thing, namely, the regenera- 
tion which should be effected among mankind. 

In like manner, as to the Judgment, God is the supreme judge, 
but the judgment is meted out to mankind while in the condition of 
human beings. How it may be as to spiritual intelligences in the 
future existence I do not pronounce, but shall speak of this subject 
in a subsequent discourse. God gives to every man happiness or 
misery according to his works. As in Jeremiah, Ch. XVII., verse 10, 
it is said : " I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins to give to 
every man according to his works and according to the fruit of his 
doings." And in Jeremiah, Ch. XXXII., verse 19, the prophet, in 
speaking of the Lord in his dealings with men, says : kw For thine 
eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men, to give every 
one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings." 
And in Matt., Ch. XVI., verse 27, it is said : " For the Son of Man 
shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he 



480 CREATOR AXD COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

shall reward every man according to Lis works." And to show that 
this judgment pertained to man in this life, it says, in the next verse: 
" Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here that shall not 
taste of death till they see the Son of Mau coming in his kingdom." 
They should not taste of death till they should see this judgment 
taking place or experience it in themselves. And in Romans, Ch. 
II., verse 6, the Apostle, in speaking with regard to God's dealings 
with man, says : " Who will render to every man according to his 
works." And in Rev., Ch. XXII., v. 12, the spirit says by the pro- 
phet : " And, behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to 
give every man according as his work shall be." It is plain, there- 
fore, from all this, that God does not condemn men for their inherent 
proneness to sin, or what may be called their original inclination to 
siu, but for their sinful acts. He judges every man according to his 
works, that is, the man stands justified or condemned before God 
according as the acts of his life are good or evil; and his conscious 
experience tells him whether he is a justified or condemned man. 
In the symbolical representation of the judgment found in Rev. XX., 
verses 12-13, it says : " And I saw the dead, small and great, stand 
before God, and the books were opened ; and another book was 
opened, which is the Book of Life ; and the dead were judged out of 
those things which were written in the books, according to their 
works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death 
and hell delivered up the dead which were in them ; and they were 
judged every man according to their works. And death and hell 
were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And 
whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into 
the lake of fire." Here the prophet, in his vision, sees the dead, 
small and great, stand before God, and he sees the books opened, 
which books represented the acts of the individual lives ; and he. 
sees another book opened, the Book of Life, which represents the 
acts of the life of the godly ; and he sees the dead judged out of 
those things which were written in the books, namely, according to 
their works. Men stand justified or condemned in their own con- 
sciences before God. And he sees death and hell cast into the lake 
of fire, which means that those who were in the death-state, and those 
who were in the hell-state of ungodliness should become into a 
worse state of misery, wretchedness, and desperation. And he sees 
whoever was not found written in the Book of Life, which means 
the ungodly, cast into the lake of fire, which is here called the second 
death, and doubtless means a death in sin and wickedness more 
effectual, more intense, so to speak, than that which the death-state, 
or the hell-state spoken of before allowed of. Hence at the time 



<J 



THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 481 

that this part of the prophecy refers to, it appears there should be 
two remarkable classes of mankind, namely, the godly and the ex- 
tremely wicked ; and that those of an intermediate character between 
the wholly godly and the ungodly, would have a tendency to wax 
worse, becoming extremely ungodly, sinful and wicked ; while in the 
following Chapters, XXI. and XXII., is depicted the new heaven, the 
new Jerusalem, the happy and blessed state of the godly, which 
contrasts remarkably with the miserable and desperate state of the 
wicked, of those who were in the state represented by the symbolic 
lake of fire, the entirely ungodly and desperately wicked. In the 
mean-time, my friends, it is well that all should cultivate firm and 
unwavering faith in the power and benevolence of the Deity to effect, 
in His all-wise providence, that they may, after their natural death, 
live consciously, happily, and eternally, in the spirit world. 

On the Cross of Christ. 

Galatians VI., 14 : " But God forbid that I should glory, save in 
the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified 
unto me and I unto the world." 

The apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatian Christians admon- 
ishes them against the teachings of those amongst them who contend- 
ed for the continuance of the old Levitical regime, especially as it 
regarded the rite of circumcision. For, he says in the two verses 
immediately preceding that in which our text is found : "As many as 
desire to make a fair show in the flesh they constrain you to be cir- 
cumcised only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of 
Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the 
law, but desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your 
.flesh." The original Jewish converts to Christianity were, for the 
most part, warmly attached to the rites of the old Mosaic dispensation, 
and prided themselves especially in the distinguishing mark of circum- 
cision. The first fifteen bishops or presiding elders of the Christian 
Church at Jerusalem, history or tradition informs us, were circum- 
cised. It was no wonder that the example of the parent Church at 
Jerusalem should have been followed by the Churches which came 
to be planted throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire, par- 
ticularly by the Jewish converts of those churches; and here we find 
this very class of converts in the Church of Galatia adheriDg scrupul- 
ously to the old rite of circumcision contrary to the will of the apostle 
to the Gentiles, who says (literally) in his letter to them : (t Let it not 
be to me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which 
the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. For in Christ 
31 



482 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but 
a new creature." And in another place in the same Epistle (Gal. V, 
6), he says : " For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any- 
thing nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love." And, 
again, in I. Cor., VII. 19, he says : " Circumcision is nothing, and un- 
circumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of 
God." It is evident, therefore, that the apostle Paul did not place 
godliness or true Christianity in the practice of the old rites and 
ceremonies of the Mosaic dispensation, but in faith which worketh 
by love, in the keeping of the commandments of God, or, in other 
words, in the being a new creature ; in the living a new life of true 
practical godliness. With the introduction of Christianity the old 
rites and ceremonies of the Jews were abolished to those who would 
accept of the new religion. True, the Christians substituted other 
rites and ceremonies for the old Jewish ones that were done away, 
such as baptism, that stood for circumcision, as the initiatory rite by 
which individuals were admitted into the Church, and the Lord's 
Supper, which represented the Jewish pascal feast, and the Jewish 
sacrificial ritual. But the essence of true Christianity consider- 
ed as the true religion always consisted, as the apostle plainly 
enough intimates, in the being a new creature, in the keeping of the 
commandments of God, in the living the new and entire life of prac- 
tical godliness. The Jews gloried in their old Mosaic ritual, and it 
is said that the farther they were removed in time from their great 
Lawgiver the greater was their veneration for him and the stronger 
their belief in the miracles he was represented to have wrought. 
But Paul, who in his youth had so firmly supported, had ere this 
ceased to have confidence or to glory in the old Mosaic institutions, 
and represents himself as deriving his confidence and glory from a 
different source, — a source of confidence and joy not heard of in the 
times of the old dispensation, — namely, in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by which the world was crucified unto him, and he unto the 
world. 

But some may ask how could he have such confidence and glory 
in that of which, if it represented reality, he had no personal experi- 
ence, for we have no reason to say that Paul ever saw Jesus Christ 
or his cross ? 

The answer to this is, first, that if he had in his mind a literal 
crucifixion of Christ, the way in which he could contemplate and glo- 
ry in it was by faith, depending upon the information, oral or written, 
which might have come to his knowledge concerning it ; and this is 
a way in which all may, if they will, contemplate and glory in Christ 
crucified, as the exercise of faith, especially if it be at all reasonable 



THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 483 

to the mind, is and has always been accounted legitimate. If the 
Gospel's representation of the crucifixion means a literal event, then 
Paul gives us on faith that which if we accept at all we must accept 
on faith. 

• , Secondly, if the Gospel's representation of the crucifixion had not 
a literal signification but symbolised something accomplished in real 
individual life, then Paul knew well that in which he had! confidence 
and glory, for he experienced it in his own life, that is, he had a most 
intimate personal experience - of it. It was that by which the world 
was crucified unto him and he unto the world. It was that which he 
preached, which to them that perish, — them that are dead in sin, 
absorbed by the world and its fashions, the flesh and its allurements, 
and are indifferent to the practice of self-denial and active godliness, 
— is foolishness ; but to them that are saved, — them that understand 
and practice it, — is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 

The contemplation and practice of the cross of Christ as under- 
stood in this latter sense, the self-abnegation and devotion to the 
cause of God implied in it, have a sanctifying effect upon the heart 
which imparts true life to the soul and turns the mind from flesh and 
sense heavenward and to God. While it humbles the temper and 
disposition it purifies and elevates the soul, and inspires the man 
with holy impulses and with heavenly aspirations. It teaches man 
his own nature and character, and makes him acquainted with the 
nature and character of God. It brings him into communion with 
the Father of Spirits, makes him realise his own Sonship, and experi- 
ence in his heart the sanctifying influences of the holy spirit. Such a 
state does a continued contemplation and practice of the cross of self- 
denial, symbolised by the cross of Christ, an unreserved and invari- 
able practice of godliness, bring one to. 

But the continued practice of active godliness must go hand in 
hand with the contemplation or practice of the cross of self-denial. 
It will not do to waste and emaciate the body by fasting and prayer 
and perform no active work for God or man. Nobody doubts that 
the monks and hermits, who lived an ascetic life upon a scanty sub- 
sistence of coarse food and clad in the coarsest garments, practised 
self-denial. They did indeed, but they did not live the life of active 
godliness which the Gospel requires. They neglected, they were 
averse to, the performance of the active duties of life which each one 
owes to perform for himself and his fellow-men. It has been aptly 
said that " they lived like drones in a beehive," supported as they 
were by the charity of an industrious but ignorant people whom they 
deceived. 

Nor is the so-called religion of those who incline to say muoh 



484 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

about godliness but do nothing in its practice, who are inclined to 
preach but do not carry out in their life and conversation the good 
principles which they inculcate ; who do not stoop to the humble 
task of the performance of those duties which are incumbent on all 
and which the Gospel requires, nor is this so-called religion, I say, 
much if any better than that of the ascetic monks and hermits. 

There are only too many of that class of men in the world who 
say too much and do too little, and who, in the common way of 
speaking, are severely orthodox in order to the preservation and 
perpetuation of a certain creed, or a certain number of opinions 
mutually dependent on each other which they have conjured up in 
their mind, which if they can be understood at all will be found to 
be quite as inconsistent and absurd as those who propound them, 
men who are so selfish, uncharitable, and intolerant, that they would 
not if they could suffer any other opinions than their own concerning 
religion to exist or be perpetuated. 

Some such men are very desirous of raising large and costly 
structures, commonly called " churches," for the practice in them of 
their form of worship, as if a large and costly edifice could in the 
estimation of men of experience and judgment make their creed 
more true, their sect more respectable, or their worship more accept- 
able to the Deity. Some of them also incline to vaunt themselves 
upon their superior learning and eloquence, and estimate themselves 
very highly upon these grounds, (so that it has been said with some 
degree of truth that theological pride is the worst species of pride) 
as if men of an humbler frame of mind, an humbler carriage, may 
not be much better learned than they ; and what does learning 
amount to if not to actual evil, if it be not employed in the inculca- 
tion of truth in all things, and, speaking religiously, of the practice 
of self-denial and active godliness, the worship of God in spirit and 
in truth, among mankind ? In my own experience I have observed 
that far too much of the idea of worldly self-interest comes into 
play in the case of some teachers of religion, which is indeed directly 
contrary to the spirit of the Gospel ; for such men as I allude to do 
not wish any competition from anything that is not exactly in accord 
with their views lest it might endanger their status in any way ; and 
if any such happens to turn up they either openly or secretly oppose 
it, sometimes with great rancour ; not considering as they should 
that men are of different characters, different turns of mind, that, in 
common parlance, men's minds are not all run in the same mould ; 
that if men of equal or better education than theirs have on some 
points a little different views from them, their views are at least 
worthy of consideration and respect ; and that if they have a right 



THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 485 

to rise in opposition and grow angry, others have the same right ; 
and that there should be consideration and charity rather than intol- 
erance and secret or overt persecution used by them in such cases. 
They in particular who stand up as teachers and examples of godli- 
ness to the people, should manifest as much as possible the spirit and 
character of Christ, they should be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow 
to wrath, always remembering that the wrath of man worketh not 
the righteousness of God. 

The practice of self-denial and active godliness, which includes 
the worship of God in spirit and in truth, and is that only which is 
worthy of the name religion, should be a practice of the daily life. 
It will not do only for stated times ; religion is not to be put on and 
taken off with the Sunday clothing. When once put on it should 
never be put off, laid aside, or dispensed with. One should always be 
clothed with the righteousness of Christ, the garments of salvation, 
which are pure and spotless, and not with the garments of one's own 
wicked practices, one's own natural depravity, which are in the sight 
of God as filthy rags. The old man, the old Adam, with his deeds 
of sin has to be "put off," and the new man, Christ Jesus, with his 
entire life of righteousness and holiness has to be ." put on," and 
having been put on should never be put off. 

The cross of Christ as rightly understood is the means which 
infinite wisdom has devised by which to bring men to the knowledge 
of the truth and to the kingdom of heaven. It is by the practice of 
the cross of self-denial, which the cross of Calvary represents, that 
human beings can attain to the knowledge of God, and to an inheri- 
tance in the kingdom of heaven as God's children. 

The whole Gospel representation, therefore, of the crucifixion 
each one should realizingly contemplate for one's self in order to their 
self-abasement, their becoming intelligently and reasonably humble, 
their becoming sanctified in heart and in life, peaceable, kind, and 
gentle in temper and disposition, and full of the knowledge and love 
of God and of love to man. The practice of self-denial and active 
godliness tends to lowliness of heart and contrition of spirit, which 
is of so great worth in the sight of God, it tends to humble the 
proud and haughty spirit. 

Pride is the great bane of our race. Men are accustomed to think 
much more of their human dignities than of their duties to God, or 
to their fellow-men. " From whence," as according to James, Ch. 
IV., 1-11, it is said, " come Avars and fightings among you ? Come 
they not hence even of your lusts, that Avar in your members ? Ye 
lust and have not : ye kill and desire to have, and cannot obtain ; 
ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and 

* The cross used by the Romans in the exscution of criminals was of rough wood extempo- 
rized oy the soldiers for the occasion, whereon the suspended victim's feet nearly touched the 
ground. See Canon Farrar's " Life of Christ." 



486 CREATOR AND COSMOS ; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGEES, ETC. 

receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your 
lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship 
of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever, therefore, will be a friend 
of the world, is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the Scripture 
saith in vain : The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy. But he 
giveth more grace : Wherefore, he saith, God resisteth the proud and 
giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to 
God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to 
God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, 
and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be afflicted, and mourn 
and weep ; let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to 
heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall 
lift } T ou up." How much envy and discord and contention and 
bloodshed and strife, how many long and bloody wars, which have 
desolated nations, filled the land and sea with blood, and caused un- 
speakable sufferings to human beings, might have been avoided, if 
only these injunctions of the Apostle had been attended to as they 
ought to have been by those who had the control of human affairs ! 
How much disquietude and ill-feeling, and wrangling, and brawling, 
which are too common to private life, and too often to the social and 
family circle, might be avoided by attending to these simple injunc- 
tions. Humble yourselves in the sight of God. Be kindly affection- 
ed one toward another. Love thinketh no evil. Thou shaltlove' 
thy neighbor as thyself. Charity sufTereth long and is kind, &c. 
Intelligent, genuine humility, which arises from the cultivation of a 
pure and contrite spirit, elevates the soul and unites it to God, while 
that humility, which is assumed and spurious, and arises from the 
practice of hypocrisy, only debases the soul and separates it farther 
from God, from his knowledge and his love. God resisteth the proud, 
but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves unto God, 
practise unfeigned humility, live soberly, honestly, and righteously 
in the active practice of godliness before him, in the fulfilment of 
your duty towards God and towards men. Fight valiantly and faith- 
fully, under the banner of Christ, glorying in the practice of self- 
denial and all godliness, which the Gospel representation of the life 
and crucifixion of Christ symbolizes. Put on the spotless robe of 
the righteousness of Christ, and be no longer clothed with the gar- 
ments of your own natural depravity made manifest in an unrigh- 
teous and unholy life which will avail you nothing before God, but 
will separate you farther from his presence, and his peace, and from 
the glory of his power. 

The preaching of the cross, says the apostle, is to them that per- 
ish foolishness, but to us that are saved it is the power of God. The 



THE CROSS OF CHRIST. 487 

bearing, the carriage, of the humble and godly Christian, causes the 
proud spirits of the world to blush and hide their heads for shame. 
Resist the devil, not by opposing pride to pride, not by opposing 
railing to railing, cursing to cursing, evil to evil, but contrariwise, 
lowliness of heart, a peaceable and gentle temper and disposition, 
blessing and goodwill, and all soberness and exemplariness of life. 
By following such a course you will acquire more divine strength. 
God, who resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble, will 
increase strength to you. By his assistance you will become effect- 
ual to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one, and will acquire 
a continuous victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil. The 
gates of hell shall not prevail against the intelligently humble, and 
the actively godly Christian. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and 
purify your hearts, ye double-minded. The double way and the 
froward mouth are abominations to the Lord. He resisteth the proud 
but giveth grace unto the humble. He knoweth them that are his, 
them that obey him in all sincerity though in the midst of a wicked 
and perverse generation, who will in their seasons of trouble and all 
through life always experience the comforts of his spirit and his as- 
sisting grace. The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, but 
none should despise that which the wisdom of God devised for the 
salvation of men to bring them to the knowledge and the sonship 
of God, and make them inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. None 
should despise the way of the cross, the way of self-denial, and of active 
godliness. Let it not be that men shall glory save in the cross of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified unto them and they 
unto the world. Of an humble and a contrite spirit at the foot of the 
cross they are nearest to God and farthest from the wicked ways of the 
world. They know that the friendships and the wicked ways of the 
world are enmity with God, and therefore they prefer, as wise men, 
to follow in the way of the cross, patiently to ascend the Calvary of 
entire self-abnegation, and there, having crucified the flesh, with its 
affections and lusts, obtain a complete victory over the world, with 
its pride, its pomps and allurements over the flesh, with its seduc- 
tions and evil propensities, and over the devil, with his wily tempta- 
tions and deceptions, and his sudden and violent assaults. Except 
ye be converted and become as little children, children of God, ye 
can in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. No man comet h 
to the Father except by the way of the Son, and that way is marked 
out in the Gospels with sufficient plainness for all to follow in it. 
Ye must be born again, even born of the Spirit of God, before ye 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. Ye must begin, continue, and 
perfect the regeneration, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision 



488 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. Ye must 
not glory in anything which the world presents or affords, but your 
source of glory must be in this, even in the cross of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, by which the world becomes crucified unto you and you unto 
the world. Not that you are to be indifferent as to the welfare of 
those whom the world has engulfed in the vortex of its deceptive 
allurements, its pleasures and its fashions, but to aim both in will 
and deed to do them good and pluck them, as brands from the burn- 
ing, or from the net in which the world and Satan have entangled 
them as captives at their will. You are soldiers in the cause of God, 
and yours is a subjective and an objective warfare ; you must bring 
yourselves and all that you have, and are, in thought, word, deed 
and effect, into subjection to the obedience of Christ ; and you must 
be actively engaged in a conquest for Christ in the world ; you must 
be engaged in gaining souls for Christ from among the world's peo- 
ple ; you do not come to bring the righteous, but sinners to repent- 
ance ; and you become all things that are good and holy and honor- 
able and true to all men, that you may by all means save some and 
bring them to truth and holiness. " For," says the Apostle, I. Cor. 
Ch. I., 21-25 : " after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wis- 
dom knew not God ; it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching 
to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the 
Greeks seek after wisdom ; but we preach Christ crucified, to the 
Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness. But unto 
them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of 
God and the wisdom of God." Again the Apostle speaks thus to 
the Romans (Romans X., 4-11) : "For Christ is the end of the law 
for righteousness to every one that belie veth.* For Moses describeth 
the righteousness which is of the law, That the man that doeth those 
things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith 
speaketh on this wise : Say not in thine heart : Who shall ascend 
into heaven (that is, to bring Christ down from above) ? or, who 
shall descend into the deep (that is, to bring up Christ again from 
the dead) ? But what saith it ? The word is nigh thee, even in thy 
mouth and in thy heart ; that is the word of faith which we preach. 
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt 
believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou 
shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteous- 
ness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." No 
one can confess truly that Jesus is Christ but by the Holy Spirit, 
and this confession is made in the realizing sense of one's self being 



* Christ is the perfection of moral and religious character which the law had in view. 



FUTURE LIFE. 489 

born again, being a child of God, a new creature, raised from a death 
of sin to a life of righteousness and active godliness. The word is 
nigh thee, even in thy mouth, that is, the word of faith which we 
preach. For the Jews require a sign, but no sign is to be given 
them ; and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but the wisdom which they 
seek will not avail them. But we, says the Apostle Paul, preach 
Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the 
Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which are " called," both Jews 
and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.* The 
Greeks were characteristically a sagacious people, but their wisdom 
did not avail them, while they continued in their state of Paganism 
to penetrate the mystery of Christ, the whole of which they counted 
foolishness ; but which the Jews found, and do find, to be a stumb- 
ling-block, as the proud, and all who refuse to humble themselves 
before God, will always and inevitably find it. 

On the Future Life. 

II. Corinthians, Ch. IV., verse 18 : " While we look not at the 
things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen ; for the 
things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not 
seen are eternal." 

The doctrine, which more than any other characterizes Christian- 
ity and makes it characteristically different from all other religions 
is the doctrine of a future life. The apostle to the Gentiles cultivated 
and taught this doctrine. He inculcated it with the greatest assurance 
and the greatest firmness, as may be understood from a consideration 
of all his writings. In the first verse of the fifth chapter of II. 
Corinthians, the verse immediately succeeding the one which contains 
our text, he says : " For we know that if our earthly house of this 
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." The whole tenor of the 
New Testament writings inculcates the Christian belief in a future 
life. It is true that this doctrine was, and is to some extent cultiva- 
ted and taught in most, if not all other religions with which we have 
any acquaintance, but it has not been, that we are aware of, believed 
so strongly or cultivated with such assurance (although the Moham- 



* By those who rightly understand Christ crucified, it is found to be the power of God and 
the wisdom of God; but to those who do not rightly understand it, whether they be within or 
without Christianity, it must appear as the Apostle says, foolishness. The proper understand- 
ing, you see, is quite simple. 



490 CREATOR AM) COSMOS; OE, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

medans firmly inculcate it) in any other religion as in the Christian. 
For over eighteen hundred years the truly godly Christian has lived 
and died in the belief that he would live blissfully in the future. He 
has endured life's trials and afflictions and sorrows and discomforts 
and grievances and pains, in the firm hope that the happiness of his 
eternal future would more than compensate him for all that he had here 
endured. Following the apostle to the Gentiles in this respect he 
did not consider the sufferings which he endured in this present life 
as worthy to be compared with the glory which should be revealed 
in him and to him in the future life. In times of trial or suffering, 
amid the varied circumstances and vicissitudes of life, at home or 
abroad, on the bed of sickness and languishing, adrift upon the 
ocean, or helplessy separated from human-kind in the trackless forest 
or in the dreary wilderness, this belief has revived and strengthened 
his soul, and enabled him with composed countenance and peaceful 
heart to endure patiently all that might befall him from the adverse 
influences of the world, and to view with complacency his circum- 
stances, whatever these might be. This belief raised him above the 
world of flesh and sense, of fleeting fashion and vain show, and en- 
abled him to stand on higher ground, even heavenly, and to contem- 
plate higher objects, even those that pertain to heaven, the redeemed 
and sanctified, and to the King of Glory, his Heavenly Father the 
Lord of Hosts himself. 

How faint is the faith or hope in the future life of modern Chris- 
tians when compared with that of thr ,se in primitive times ! It is only 
as the view of the morning star making its appearance above the 
horizon and ushering in the day, as compared with the full view of the 
risen sun. As the Church grows older it appears that this faith 
grows weaker ; and now the faith of Christians (not speaking of 
that kind of faith which is simply the offspring of ignorance and su- 
perstition) may be called in the main a general and tacit acquiescence 
in the long-received doctrine of the future life. Few now-a-days 
have that childlike, unwavering confidence of the primitive Chris- 
tians. The early Christian believed that when he died he would go 
to heaven, where he would forever be with the Lord : and this his 
faith enabled him to expect with complacency the time of his dissolu- 
tion, and to pass triumphantly over the dark valley of the shadow of 
death. Would that such a simple, a childlike, shall we say, a godlike 
faith of a blissful future life were more cultivated now by professing 
Christians ! Would that with all their enlightenment and all the knowl- 
edge which modern advancement in science enables them to possess, 
people would come back again to the old ways of the early Chris- 
tians, so far at least as the cultivating a firm faith in the future life is 



THE FUTTTBE LIFE. 491 

concerned. It may be remarked that the early Christians lived in 
general better and holier lives than the modern Christians : that they 
lived lives of self-denial, crucifying the flesh with its affection's and 
lusts, lives of active godliness in the spirit ; and that thus living 
they were never afraid to die, as they always endeavored to be pre- 
pared to meet their Heavenly Father and Judge. The consciousness 
of a well-spent life gave them confidence in the hour of death, of their 
acceptance with God, and of their gaining admission into those 
heavenly mansions which God has prepared for them that love Him 
and live according to His requirements. There is no doubt that this 
was the case in general with the primitive Christians, and is the 
case with all who live alike godly lives and cultivate alike unwaver- 
ing faith in the blissful future life which God will favor them with. 
There is no reason why people in general now-a-days may not live as 
holy lives and cultivate as firm a faith in the power and goodness of 
God and in a blissful immortality for themselves, as did the primitive 
Christians ; and there is reason to believe that many, very many, do 
live alike godly lives and cultivate alike firm and simple faith in the 
power and goodness of God to effect a blissful immortality for them, 
as did the early Christians ; and it is rather a matter of regret that 
Christians in general do not live and believe thus. Mohammed, though 
he did not pretend to understand how the resurrection would be ef- 
fected, or the way and manner in which it would take place, still 
cultivated and inculcated a firm faith in the resurrection of the body 
and the future life of mankind. He relied on the power of God, who 
first created the body, to re-animate it or create it anew, and from 
the abundance of his goodness and mercy to afford a happy immor- 
tality to the good, and from his justice and wisdom to appoint the 
evil to a place of retribution as a reward for their iniquities. 
There is no reason why Christians, with all their intelligence, may 
not cultivate alike firm faith, why they may not inculcate it to the 
great comfort of all who need such consolation and to the great moral 
advancement of mankind. Most of the ancient religions or mytho- 
logical systems were characterized by having a belief in some sort of 
the future life. This future state some of them, as the Egyptians, or 
those who believed in the doctrine of transmigration, placed on this 
earth, where they professed to believe the souls again would re- 
animate their old mansions after an absence of three thousand years; 
would again inhabit the earth and enjoy the comforts and beauties of 
the terrestrial existence for another period. Only some of the heathen 
mythologies particularly describe the intermediate state of the soul, 
but according to Herodotus, the Egyptians had it that it passed 
through the bodies of all the animals of the land and sea in the time 



492 CEEATOE AND COSMOS; OE, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC, 

which intervened during its departure from and its return to the 
body. The ancient Greek and Roman mythologies, as well as those of 
some of the Asiatic nations, such as the Medes, Persians, and Bactri- 
ans, had it that the soul after its departure from the body was subject- 
ed to a judgment in the kingdom of the dead, and according as its mer- 
its or demerits preponderated in the real or allegorical scale so was its 
condition in the future existence determined. Plato in the Phsedon rep- 
resents Socrates a little before his death, when encompassed with a 
circle of philosophers, and discoursing with them on the arguments 
which prove the eternal destiny of man, as speaking thus : " When 
the dead are arrived at the rendezvous of departed souls, whither 
their angel conducts them, they are all judged. Those who have 
passed their lives in a manner neither entirely criminal nor absolutely 
innocent are shut into a place where they suffer pains proportioned 
to their faults, until being purged and cleansed of their guilt and 
afterwards restored to liberty, they receive the reward of the good 
actions they have done in the body. Those who are judged to be 
incurable, on account of the greatness of their crimes, the fatal des- 
tiny that passes judgment upon them hurls them into Tartarus, from 
whence they never depart. Those who are found guilty of crimes 
great indeed, but are worthy of pardon, who have committed violence 
in the transports of rage against their father or mother, or have 
killed some one in a like emotion and afterwards repented, — suffer 
the same punishment with the last, but for a time only, until by 
prayers and supplications they have obtained pardon from those they 
have injured. But those who have passed through life with a peculiar 
sanctity of manners are received on high into a pure region, where they 
live without their bodies to all eternity in a series of joys and delights 
which cannot be described." From such considerations, Socrates con- 
cludes that : " If the soul be immortal it requires to be cultivated with 
attention, not only for what we call the time of life, but for that which 
is to follow, I mean eternity ; and the least neglect on this point may 
be attended with endless consequences. If death were the final disso- 
lution of being, the wicked would be great gainers by it, by being 
delivered at once from their bodies, their souls, and their vices ; but as 
the soul is immortal, it has no other means of being freed from its evils, 
nor any safety for it but in becoming very good and very wise ; for it 
carries nothing with it but its good or bad deeds, its virtues or vices, 
which are commonly the consequences of the education it has re- 
ceived, and the causes of its eternal happiness or misery." Having 
held such discourses with his friends, he kept silent for some time, 
and then drank off the whole of the poisonous draught, which had 
been prepared for him, with amazing tranquility and an inexpressible 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 493 

serenity of aspect, of one who was about to exchange a short and 
wretched life for a blessed and eternal existence. 

The American Indians believe that beyond the most distant 
mountains of their country there is a wide river ; beyond that river 
a great country; on the other side of that country, a world of water ; 
in that water are a thousand islands full of trees and streams of 
water ; and that a thousand buffaloes and ten thousand deer graze 
on the hills or ruminate in the valleys. When they die they are per- 
suaded that the Great Spirit will conduct them to this abode of 
souls. 

Thus it appears that not only the philosophers of antiquity have 

recognized in various ways the immortality of the soul, but even the 

most savage tribes fortify their minds in the prospect of death with a 

hope of a happiness commensurate to their desires in the regions 

beyond the grave. 

" Hope springs eternal in the human breast; 
Man never is but always to be blest, 
The soul uneasy and confined from home, 
Rests and expatiates in a life to come." 

Is it not, therefore, with the highest reason that the Christian, 
with all his superior intelligence, should cultivate that firm faith 
and hope which reposes itself upon the reality of that future exist- 
ence which God in his wisdom, power aud goodness, hath appointed 
for mankind, and should live such a life of holiness and godliness as 
will ensure him a place among the blissful redeemed in the great 
hereafter? God's intelligent presence is everywhere. He 
speaks to me in audible tones from the winds and from the waves ; 
and from the depths of my own heart, and in every object that exists 
within my observation, I experience his presence and intelligence. If 
one ascends up to heaven he is there; if one descends into hell, be- 
hold, he is there ; if one take the wings of the morning and go to 
the uttermost parts of the sea, or if one descends to the rocky cav- 
erns of the depths of the ocean; if one go into the wilderness or to 
the trackless forest far away from human habitations, even there he 
is present; and so he is present in the grave, and out of his presence 
one cannot be. He is not only omnipresent essentially but he is 
omnipresent intelligently and certainly this argues immortality in 
some way for us his creatures. If it doth not yet appear what "we 
shall be, is there not still good reason to hope that we, I mean now 
our rational intelligences, will exist intelligently in the future? And 
if this our reasonable, religious, and holy hope is well grounded, as it 
appears to be, then what a glorious and blessed future may the good 
picture for themselves. If we live in souk 1 way in the future all 



494 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

■who have preceded us are now living in some way, and thus what a 
glorious future can we picture to ourselves of the good and holy of 
every preceding age now enjoying the highest felicity in the man- 
sions which had been for them prepared, and into which they were 
received by their Heavenly Father on their departure from this 
earthly scene of their existence. There they are forever with the 
Lord. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament saints are 
there and those who have, in any age, lived lives of self-denial and 
godliness, who have lived and labored or suffered for the cause of 
truth and righteousness. There are the holy men and martyrs of the 
true Christian faith who find exquisite enjoyment in their associa- 
tions with the good and holy of every religion and age and nation ; 
and there are those, both male and female, who have lived lives of 
philanthropy and charity, men and women who have travelled from 
land to land, from city to city, from house to house, and from one 
abode of misery and wretchedness to another, in alleviating human 
suffering, in binding up the broken-hearted, and in comforting those 
that mourned, in administering comfort and religious instruction to 
the prisoner in his cell and to the invalid upon his bed of languish- 
ing, and in giving the support and the necessaries of life to the in- 
digent and the needy. There are all those of every age and coun- 
try who have lived lives of active godliness, of philanthropy, and of 
exemplariness among mankind. There they all with united heart 
and voice join in the ineffably delightful harmonies and symphonies 
of the Redeemed. 

It appears that although the Creator in the general course of his 
providence has connected happiness with the observance of his laws, 
and misery with the violation of them, in order to display the rect- 
itude of his character, and his hatred of moral evil; yet he has at 
the same time in numerous instances permitted vice to triumph and 
virtue to be persecuted and oppressed, to convince us, it may be, 
that his government of human beings is not bounded by the limits 
of the human life, but extends into the eternal world where the 
system of his moral administration will be completed, his wisdom 
and rectitude justified, and the mysterious ways of his providence 
completely made to appear. 

The difference between virtue and vice, between right and wrong, 
is founded upon the nature of things, and is perceptible by every 
intelligent agent whose moral feelings are not blunted by vicious 
indulgences. Were a man to assert that there is no difference be- 
tween truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, love and hatred, 
godliness and ungodliness; that it is equally the same, whether we 
be faithful to a friend, or betray him to his enemies, whether ser- 



FUTURE LIFE. 495 

vants act with fidelity to their employers, or rob them of their prop- 
erty, whether rulers oppress those whom they govern, or promote 
their interests and welfare, and whether parents care for their chil- 
dren with tenderness, or treat them with cruelty, or destroy their 
lives in their infancy, he would at once be denounced as a raving 
maniac and be banished from society. The difference between such 
actions is eternal and immutable, and every moral agent is endowed 
with a faculty which enables him to perceive that virtue and vice 
sooner or later ensure their own reward. We can choose to perform 
the one class of actions and to refrain from the other ; or we can com- 
ply with the voice of conscience, which deters us from the one and 
incites us to the other, or we can resist its dictates and we can judge 
whether our actions deserve reward or punishment. Now if we are 
inbued by our Creator with such moral perceptions and capacities 
as enable us to at once distinguish between right and wrong, does 
it appear reasonable to suppose that it is equally indifferent to him 
whether we obey or disobey these moral laws which he has implanted 
in us? Can we ever suppose that the governor of the universe 
is an unconcerned spectator of the good or evil actions which hap- 
pen throughout his dominions? Or that he has left man, unrecog- 
nized or with impunity, to act according to his inclinations, whether 
these be right or wrong? If such suppositions are inadmissible, 
then it follows that man is responsible for his actions, and that it 
must be an essential part of the Divine government to bring every 
action into judgment, and to reward or punish his rational creatures 
according to their works. And if it may happen, as in point of fact 
to our observation and judgment it occasionally does, that such re- 
tributions are not fully awarded in the present state, nor a visible 
distinction always made between the righteous and the violators of 
God's law, is it not necessary for us with our present knowledge to 
admit the 'conclusion that a full and equitable distribution of re- 
wards and punishments is reserved to a future world, where a visible 
distinction will be made, and all intelligent existences clearly dis- 
cern between those that served God and those that served him 
not?* 

There is no ground for believing that throughout all the worlds 
that exist in the immensity of space a single atom has ever yet been 
or ever will be annihilated. No instance has yet occurred within 
the observation of our assisted or unassisted sight of any system or 
portion of matter, either in the earth or the heavens, haying boon 



* A careful perusal of Butler's Analogy, especially Its First Tart, may assist to a more 
definite belief of the future existence. 



496 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETCU 

reduced to annihilation. Changes are indeed unceasingly taking 
place in countless variety throughout every department of nature. 

And if amidst the perpetual changes, transformations, and revolu- 
tions, that are going on throughout universal nature in all its depart- 
ments no particle of matter is ever lost, or reduced to annihilation, 
is it not in the highest degree probable that the thinking principle 
in man will not be destroyed by the change which takes place at 
the moment of his dissolution? Even although its consciousness 
of existence were to be suspended for thousands of years, its Crea- 
tor can afterwards invest it with a new organical frame suited to 
the expansive sphere of action to which it is destined, and the in- 
tervening period of its repose may be made to appear no longer than 
the lapse of a few moments. In short, if the material universe has 
existed hitherto and will continue to exist, so that not a single atom 
or element now in existence has at any time, or shall at any time be 
annihilated, is it reasonable to suppose that the thinking principle in 
man, whatever may be its nature and substance (for there have been 
many discussions, childlike indeed, as to the materiality or the imma- 
teriality of the soul, or the rational faculty in man), and however 
varied the transformations through which it may pass, shall ever be 
annihilated? If the Creator is both able and willing to perpetuate 
the existence of the rational spirit through an endless duration, and 
if his wisdom, benevolence, justice, and rectitude require that this 
object should be accomplished, it is plain that all difficulties arising 
from its nature or the mode of its subsistence must at once vanish, 
and that the arguments in favor of its future existence are equally 
conclusive whether we consider the rational principle as a pure, im- 
material, or so-called simple substance; or only a peculiar modifica- 
tion of matter which is so-called a compound of different elements. 
Moreover, it does not appear that the Creator is under any necessity 
to annihilate the rational principle for want of power to support 
its faculties, for want of objects on which to exercise them, or for 
want of space to contain the innumerable intelligences, visible or in- 
visible, that are incessantly emerging into existence; for the range 
of immensity is the theater of his omnipotence ; and that creative 
energy which brings these innumerable creatures into existence will 
also afford places for their habitations, and produce objects for them 
on which to employ their faculties while the eternal ages roll on. 

From all that I have said it appears that the eternal existence, 
in some way, of the intelligent principle in man is highly reasonable 
and probable. Aid, if so, should it not be with us an object of the 
firmest faith and hope? 



FUTURE LIFE. 497 

The writers of the Scriptures, especially of the New Testament, 
firmly inculcate faith in the existence of the future life. " Faith," 
says Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews, " is the confident expecta- 
tion of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen." It 
implies a trustful confidence in the existence of a future state, and 
of the rewards of the godly in the life to come ; for, says the apostle 
with respect to Abraham, " he looked for a city which had founda- 
tions, whose builder and maker is God." With respect to Moses he 
says that with all his persecutions and afflictions " he endured, as 
seeing him who is invisible, for he had respect to the recompense of 
the reward." And with regard to all the other patriarchs whose 
names stand high on the records of the Old Testament Church he 
declares that " they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims 
on the earth," and they " declare plainly that they sought a better 
country, that is, an heavenly, and that those who " were tortured " 
to cause them to renounce their faith endured their sufferings with 
invincible fortitude "not accepting deliverance" when it was 
offered them, " that they might obtain a better resurrection." 

Paul when looking forward to the dissolution of his own frame, 
declares in his own name and in the name of all Christians that 
" our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ; while we look not at 
the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen ; for 
the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not 
seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house of this 
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." While these and many 
similar passages clearly demonstrate the faith of their authors in an 
eternal world, and the future happiness of the righteous, the Scrip- 
ture writers are equally explicit in asserting the future misery of the 
wicked. " The unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God," 
but, " shall go away into everlasting punishment." " Rejoice, O 
young man in thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in 
the sight of thine eyes, but know thou that for all these things God 
will bring thee into judgment." " For God shall bring every work 
into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or 
whether it be evil." May you all, young and old, male and* female, 
follow that course of holiness and righteousness which will ensure 
you happiness in the life that now is, and in that which is to come, 
is our earnest prayer. 



32 



498 CREATOR AND COSMOS; OR, COSMOTHEOLOGIES, ETC. 

The following is an extract from Bickersteth's "Paradise of the 
Blessed Dead," which might be thought to serve also as a repre- 
sentation of some supposed general states and conditions of rational being9 
in this terrestrial life. This poetic allegory wherein he supposes himself to 
have entered Paradise with Oriel, his guardian or conducting angel, is in 
part, as follows : — 

" I was no stranger in a strange land there : 

But rather as one, who, travel-worn and weary, 

Weary of wandering through many climes, 

At length returned homeward, eyes afar off 

The white cliffs of his fatherland, and ere 

The laboring ship touches its sacred soil 

Leaps on the pier, while round him crowding press 

Children, and kith, and friends, who in a breath 

Ask of his welfare, and with joyous tongues 

Pour all their love into his thirsty ear. 

****** Me Oriel led 

From bower to bower, from peopled glen to glen, 

From saintly company to company, 

And showed me of the mysteries that fill 

That world of spirits, etc. * * * 

Children of light, through fields of light we pass'd 

Unchallenged, not ungreeted with the smiles 

Of welcomes without number. And I mark'd 

How largely the redeemed, though free to range 
. Within the limits almost limitless 

Of those celestial regions, group' d themselves 

They and their guardian spirits with other saints, 

Their fellow-pilgrims on the earth. It was 

No rigid severance; for many walk'd, 

As we were walking, to and fro abroad 

Throughout those blissful mansions ; but enough 

Of chosen and endeared companionship 

To mark the character of centuries 

And generations, as concentric rings 

Of increase chronicle the growth of trees ; 

Or as the strata of the rocks record, 

Not without many an intercepting view, 

The onward march of ages. Oriel read 
' My wonder, though unspoken, and replied: 

Remember that the same Omniscient Love 

Designed this temple, built of living stones 

Wherein himself to dwell forevermore, 

As hung the firmament with globes of light 



FUTUKE LIFE. 499 

And group' d them, as it pleased him best, in group* 

Of suns and planets, and in spiral coils 

Of stars innumerable, and decreed 

Amid this maze of constellations each 

Should minister to each, and by one law 

Of gravitation be forever link'd. 

So, by the vast necessity of love, 

Necessity with equal freedom poised, 

Saints cling to saints, angels to angels cleave, 

And men and angels in One Father's house 

Are all as brethren. Not that love can be 

Without the chosen specialties of love, 

The nearest to the nearest most akin. 

But none are strangers here, none sojourner*! 

And as the cloudless ages glide away 

New fountains of delight to us, to all, 

Will open in the fellowship of hearts 

Unfathomed by us yet. Nor time will fail ; 

For an eternity to come is ours 

With humble contemplation to adore 

The counsels of a past eternity. 

But mark who next seem waiting our adv&nct 

Ir yonder vale," etc., etc. 



THE END. 



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